Why is it only white people that are racist?

[DrZoidberg]

If it's been discussed before, please delete, or go for it. But I am curious as to what you think.

Being squeezed out of a vagina is hardly anything to be proud about. Chinese nationalists aren't proud about being yellow. Muslims aren't proud about being brown. Being proud of being a specific colour I think is unavoidably racist. For the same reason I think black pride is problematic.

 

[Speakpigeon]

derail/

Being squeezed out of a vagina is hardly anything to be proud about.

Ah. Yes. Ok. I see!

Yes, I understand what you mean now but I had to perform a double take... For a moment I was back at least forty years, at a moment I can't possibly find anything to be proud about.

Still, thank you for reminding me so vividly of that one episode in my reproductive efforts of my youth. One I had preferred to forget about.

Priceless. Thanks.
EB

/derail

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Okay, that's a legitimate position to take. If you prefer to reserve the term "racism" for what America had prior to the civil rights revolution, when discrimination against black people was institutionalized and it was government policy to keep them as second class citizens, that's a perfectly valid terminological choice. But it isn't what J842P means by the word. Finger on the scale evidently satisfies what he means by "racism". Trying to refute him by using a different definition of the key term doesn't work. All you get that way is a failure to communicate.

Of course, maybe what you wrote wasn't an argument at all, but performance art meant to get people to feel like using your "back in the good ole days" definition of racism. The trouble is, you already posted your definition of "racism", and it wasn't restricted to actions aimed at creating a self-perpetuating second class race. What J842P was referring to satisfies the definition you posted.

You probably need to reread what I wrote if that is what you got. Maybe my "performance art" is too avant garde for you to understand.

But it isn't wildly ignorant for other people to use words their way instead of your way;

You mean via juxtapositioning? It is ignorant to do so. It is a bit like First World problems. Can't get the damn Roku to hook up to the router. My goodness, life is tough. And we really haven't gotten to the issue of how no one has shown how people have been harmed by AA yet.

The thing to keep in mind is, words are always used by juxtaposing grossly varying items and using the same word to describe them.

Like Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

That's the whole point. Words are not for grouping like things; they're for grouping unlike things -- for pointing out some particular respect in which the unlike things are similar or identical. When someone objects to a speaker using the same word for two referents because the referents are grossly different, what it means is, he disapproves of the speaker caring about the respect in which the referents are similar.

You can feel free to stop putting words in my mouth at any time. I have clearly made my point, AA isn't racism, AA hasn't been shown to harm whites (other than through literary prose of a web board).

I do want to note I goofed on the stats, White include Hispanic. I updated the table removing Hispanic whites from White and I added Asians, because apparently only Asians are harmed now, which is why so many conservatives are up in arms about AA... because of the Asians.

They're up in arms, by and large, because of the principle of the thing...

Thanks for noting that they have no case to demonstrate people have been harmed by AA.

I understand that people with a tribal mentality tend to be unable to comprehend non-tribal thought, resulting in a hard-to-overcome impulse to interpret disagreement through a "Which enemy tribe is it that guy's goal to promote?" filter. But that's a failing of tribal thinkers, not a failing of the targets of their invective.

What is with all of your passive aggressive bullshiting? Are you going to get to the point where you actually demonstrate that AA is a problem, and not from a theoretical POV?

Asians have a higher racial enrollment than any other race in the US. An interesting look at it, when you look at the increase of college enrollment, relative to the population change over the same period of time (1980 to 2010), enrollment among whites increased verses population increase by nearly double of blacks, latinos, and asians.

How are you getting that? Your updated chart shows enrollment among latinos increased versus population increase by over double the increase of blacks, whites, and asians combined (3.6 vs .2 + 1 + .2).

Sorry, must be my avant garde math that is the issue here. Take the (ENROLL₂₀₁₀ - ENROLL₁₉₈₀) / (POP₂₀₁₀ - POP₁₉₈₀) . This tells you that the 2.9 million enrollment increase among whites over that period was 17% of the increase in population among whites, where as it was 8% for Blacks, 9.5% for Latinos, and 9% for Asians. IE despite white population being relatively stagnant, there was plenty of white enrollment growth in those 30 years.

Knowing this, it is hard to tell how AA is negatively affecting whites.

But it isn't hard to tell...

So easy to tell, you don't have any thing to provide but an opinion.

-- all it takes to tell how AA is negatively affecting whites is to remind yourself that when somebody inhibits Bob's opportunities and somebody else enhances Charlie's opportunities, the circumstance that Charlie's skin is the same color as Bob's skin doesn't do Bob a darn bit of good. Group averages of the sort you're posting are simply irrelevant to the issue of whether there are white people getting negatively affected by AA.

I think what you meant to say was that Bob didn't get into Princeton so he'll have to deal with going to Cornell instead.

On top of that, when you focus on total college enrollment, you aren't merely treating white people as interchangeable parts. You're treating colleges as interchangeable parts. Getting bumped down to your safety school instead of getting into the school you were hoping to go to counts as being negatively affected, even though you still get to go to college.

And at some point, I just know you'll provide evidence that white people are being subjected to having to attend Oklahoma A&M - North Buttfuck Campus because some C and D black kid got into Harvard instead.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

If you can control those instinctive prejudices then you're not a racist. That takes the ability to see yourself in other people. In my experience not many people exhibit that behavior.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If it's been discussed before, please delete, or go for it. But I am curious as to what you think.

Being squeezed out of a vagina is hardly anything to be proud about. Chinese nationalists aren't proud about being yellow. Muslims aren't proud about being brown. Being proud of being a specific colour I think is unavoidably racist. For the same reason I think black pride is problematic.

Yup. You should be proud of your accomplishments, not of how you were created.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

If it's been discussed before, please delete, or go for it. But I am curious as to what you think.

Being squeezed out of a vagina is hardly anything to be proud about. Chinese nationalists aren't proud about being yellow. Muslims aren't proud about being brown. Being proud of being a specific colour I think is unavoidably racist. For the same reason I think black pride is problematic.

Yup. You should be proud of your accomplishments, not of how you were created.

I think everyone quivers when thinking about their parents having sex.

I do ponder if the actual concept of "black pride" isn't quite reaching Loren and DrZoidberg.

 

[Toni]

If it's been discussed before, please delete, or go for it. But I am curious as to what you think.

Being squeezed out of a vagina is hardly anything to be proud about. Chinese nationalists aren't proud about being yellow. Muslims aren't proud about being brown. Being proud of being a specific colour I think is unavoidably racist. For the same reason I think black pride is problematic.

Yup. You should be proud of your accomplishments, not of how you were created.

It has nothing to do with 'how' you are created. It does have to do with being able to feel pride in your family. For example, I know that my grandfather was forced to support his own family at the age of 16 when his father died unexpectedly. They were farmers and in those days, farming meant a horse or mule and a plow. Lots of extremely exhausting labor. My grandfather took care of his mother and his younger siblings. Because of his sacrifice, his younger siblings all were able to attend school much longer than my grandfather, even earning college degrees, which was unusual at that time for anybody, much less the orphan children of a dead immigrant dirt farmer. I confess that I feel a sense of pride in knowing how much hard work and determination and frankly, stubborn refusal to give up it too my grandfather to survive and to ensure that his siblings survived and out-achieved him. Then there was the Great Depression, two young children and a very sick wife who died much too young. But he survived and his kids survived and did better than he did. These are not my accomplishments, but I look at my family and I see some of those characteristics through the generations: being willing to sacrifice in order for others to survive and even thrive. Being willing to do extremely difficult work and to take pride in that work, even if it did not bring you wealth and in fact, sometimes barely kept you fed.

In the United States, most black Americans are descended from ancestors who were stolen, forced into ships which sailed thousands of miles to a new land, were sold into slavery, beaten, used as beasts of burden or worse, forbidden to speak their own languages or practice their own cultural and religious beliefs and forbidden to learn to read and write, to own property, to marry as they chose, to have any agency over their own being. For generations. And after slavery ended, the rank prejudice against people who were formerly enslaved did not end but was codified into all sorts of laws, ensuring that any small progress would be hard fought and hard won. In my own lifetime, black people were murdered for registering to vote, for attempting to vote. For looking at a white woman the wrong way or being accused of such actions. In some places black people were forbidden to marry white people, attend the same schools or hospitals, drink from the same water fountains, eat at the same lunch counters, sleep in the same hotel rooms as whites. In every way possible, black people were told that they were less than, that they did not matter, that they could be snuffed out without any recourse.

With so much effort, so many laws concentrated on making certain that black people did not dare reach too high, that they were kept to the back of the line, the back of the bus, that their voices were silenced, it is pretty easy to see why white folks need to be reminded that the lives of black folk matter. Because pretty often, white people don't even notice the ways that we make sure they don't.

 

[laughing dog]

Whether it's racism is on-topic.

Exactly. From this thread racism clearly has multiple meanings that are quite different. Traditionally, racism has meant
"a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race ". It is also taken to mean "racial prejudice or discrimination " (both definitions are from www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racism). The 2nd definition - the one anti AAers employ - does not mean the same as the 1st definition. Frankly, the 2nd definition literally covers the discrimination in Jim Crow Laws and "separate and equal", and the casting of a black man as Federick Douglass while not considering any other people from other races. In my opinion, equating the 2nd type of "racism" with the 1st kind confuses the issue. The two are not the same - neither in meaning nor in their moral implications.

 

[Underseer]

If it's been discussed before, please delete, or go for it. But I am curious as to what you think.

Being squeezed out of a vagina is hardly anything to be proud about. Chinese nationalists aren't proud about being yellow. Muslims aren't proud about being brown. Being proud of being a specific colour I think is unavoidably racist. For the same reason I think black pride is problematic.

The concept of Black pride (to make one example) exists because our racist society does so much to tell African-American children that they are less than everyone else. It's not about telling minority corn that they are superior, it's about countering cultural assumptions that tell them they are less.

 

[Underseer]

On a related note, here's a video about how many white Americans still benefit from systemic racism in the past, and how that same past keeps many minorities down:



While this is specific to America, is another example of why criticism of racism goes in one direction. We are part of a society and are affected by that society. We and everyone in this society is affected by this that happened in the past.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

On a related note, here's a video about how many white Americans still benefit from systemic racism in the past, and how that same past keeps many minorities down:



While this is specific to America, is another example of why criticism of racism goes in one direction. We are part of a society and are affected by that society. We and everyone in this society is affected by this that happened in the past.

I lived for a while in one of those new white only developments near Chicago. You had to be approved by present homeowners to get in, so if you weren't white you were fucked. These were all racist dudes who fled their old neighborhoods because those old neighborhoods weren't white enough anymore.

I didn't like it there. It was worse than living in Georgia or Alabama.

 

[Bomb#20]

You mean via juxtapositioning? It is ignorant to do so. It is a bit like First World problems. Can't get the damn Roku to hook up to the router. My goodness, life is tough.

You know what "ignorant" means, don't you? You aren't demonstrating J842P is unaware of certain facts; you're demonstrating that you have a problem with him caring about his concerns instead of caring about your concerns.

And we really haven't gotten to the issue of how no one has shown how people have been harmed by AA yet.

Been there, done that, post #115. AA in college admissions works by harming people -- by inhibiting somebody's opportunity in order to transfer that opportunity to somebody else.

That's the whole point. Words are not for grouping like things; they're for grouping unlike things -- for pointing out some particular respect in which the unlike things are similar or identical. When someone objects to a speaker using the same word for two referents because the referents are grossly different, what it means is, he disapproves of the speaker caring about the respect in which the referents are similar.

You can feel free to stop putting words in my mouth at any time.

If you don't disapprove of J842P caring more about AA and whatever you mean by "racism" both being racial discrimination than caring about avoiding juxtaposing grossly varying levels of policies, why the devil did you get on his case?

I have clearly made my point, AA isn't racism,

Okay, then your definition in post #109 is wrong, since AA clearly satisfies your definition. Feel free to post a new definition.

AA hasn't been shown to harm whites (other than through literary prose of a web board).

Why are you making an issue of that? In the first place, what you appear to mean is it hasn't been shown to harm the average white person, since you keep posting data that addresses averages and says jack squat about individuals. But since nobody actually is the average white person, harm or lack thereof to the average white person is immaterial.

And in the second place, the claim you're up in arms about is that AA is racist. A policy self-evidently doesn't have to harm whites to be racist. Racism can harm Asians instead.

I do want to note I goofed on the stats, White include Hispanic. I updated the table removing Hispanic whites from White and I added Asians, because apparently only Asians are harmed now, which is why so many conservatives are up in arms about AA... because of the Asians.

They're up in arms, by and large, because of the principle of the thing...

Thanks for noting that they have no case to demonstrate people have been harmed by AA.

Non sequitur much? It is possible to object on principle and also be able to demonstrate harm.

In any event, who gives a rat's ass what conservatives can demonstrate? This is a discussion board -- the issue is what TFT posters can demonstrate. If conservatives by and large suck at demonstrating stuff, that in no way distinguishes them from any other political ideology's adherents. And if some liberal here shows that the conservatives are right on some point, the fact that conservatives only intuit that point and it takes a liberal TFT poster to demonstrate it does not invalidate the demonstration.

What is with all of your passive aggressive bull...

Oh, come on, like your "...which is why so many conservatives are up in arms about AA... because of the Asians." wasn't aggressive? You want me to tone it down, lead the way.

Are you going to get to the point where you actually demonstrate that AA is a problem, and not from a theoretical POV?

Who, me? Where am I supposed to have indicated that AA is problem? Your arguments are a problem. It's perfectly possible to make a rational defense of AA -- you just do a cost-benefit analysis and produce a calculation to the effect that it increases total human happiness. But nobody ever seems to do that. AA advocates instead nonsensically dispute that it hurts anyone, or insinuate that its victims deserve it, or insult people for the sin of caring about its victims. AA advocates are a problem.

How are you getting that? Your updated chart shows enrollment among latinos increased versus population increase by over double the increase of blacks, whites, and asians combined (3.6 vs .2 + 1 + .2).

Sorry, must be my avant garde math that is the issue here. Take the (ENROLL₂₀₁₀ - ENROLL₁₉₈₀) / (POP₂₀₁₀ - POP₁₉₈₀) . This tells you that the 2.9 million enrollment increase among whites over that period was 17% of the increase in population among whites, where as it was 8% for Blacks, 9.5% for Latinos, and 9% for Asians. IE despite white population being relatively stagnant, there was plenty of white enrollment growth in those 30 years.

I see. I'm mystified as to why you consider (ENROLL₂₀₁₀ - ENROLL₁₉₈₀) / (POP₂₀₁₀ - POP₁₉₈₀) to be a relevant statistic. If the Zoroastrian population of the U.S. is unchanged since 1980, but one more Zorastrian is in college now than then, your formula would tell you Zoroastrian enrollment rose infinity percent.

Knowing this, it is hard to tell how AA is negatively affecting whites.

But it isn't hard to tell...

So easy to tell, you don't have any thing to provide but an opinion.

Your resistance to theoretical arguments is not an attitude you've justified. But whatever. Yes, it has negatively affected whites. AA negatively affected Alan Bakke, Barbara Grutter, Jennifer Gratz, Patrick Hamacher, Cheryl Hopwood, Douglas Carvell, Kenneth Elliott, and David Rogers. That's why they all were found by courts to have standing to sue colleges over it.

-- all it takes to tell how AA is negatively affecting whites is to remind yourself that when somebody inhibits Bob's opportunities and somebody else enhances Charlie's opportunities, the circumstance that Charlie's skin is the same color as Bob's skin doesn't do Bob a darn bit of good. Group averages of the sort you're posting are simply irrelevant to the issue of whether there are white people getting negatively affected by AA.

I think what you meant to say was that Bob didn't get into Princeton so he'll have to deal with going to Cornell instead.

See, this is how AA advocates argue, instead of admitting to themselves that they're getting their hands dirty screwing somebody for the sake of the greater good. Tell me straight up, if Princeton had a "Blacks have to have SAT scores 50 points higher than everybody else to be considered" policy, would you pooh pooh their complaints with "Bob didn't get into Princeton so he'll have to deal with going to Cornell instead", or would you say Princeton was racist?

Be that as it may, your argument is lame even on its own terms, because Cornell discriminates against Asians too. Every Asian that Princeton kicks down to Cornell is taking a spot Cornell allocated for Asians, and that means Cornell will kick an additional Asian with Cornell-caliber grades down to Oklahoma A&M or wherever.

And at some point, I just know you'll provide evidence that white people are being subjected to having to attend Oklahoma A&M ... because some C and D black kid got into Harvard instead.

I'm sorry, did somebody say black kids who get into Harvard based on AA preferences hadn't been getting As and Bs? You have any idea how many 4.0 GPA applicants Harvard rejects every year?

 

[Trausti]

Institutional Racism.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Institutional Racism.

The use of WMD is prohibited, why are you presenting such strong evidence?

 

[Toni]

Institutional Racism.

Does this take into consideration the number of applications to medical school by a single applicant?

 

[spikepipsqueak]

Institutional Racism.

I'm not sure you read graphical information well.

Unless you know the raw numbers that applied and the percentage that number is of their "race" in the general population, that graph tells you nothing about who is favoured and who isn't.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Institutional Racism.

Does this take into consideration the number of applications to medical school by a single applicant?

Does your post take into consideration the constellation it was in when you posted it?

- - - Updated - - -

Institutional Racism.

I'm not sure you read graphical information well.

Unless you know the raw numbers that applied and the percentage that number is of their "race" in the general population, that graph tells you nothing about who is favoured and who isn't.

I have no idea what you are thinking.

 

[BH]

I live in a small city 50 miles south of Dallas. We all get along pretty well here. In fact Corsicana is minority majority now. It seems to me, and I work for the public, that a good half of the romantic relationships are interracial, and a good percentage of the kids being part black, part white or part hispanic. You go further south to Mexia and the numbers are even higher. You see even more white with black relationships there. All this racism worry must be in the bigger cities where your neighborhoods are still segregated. I know a white lady that opposed integration that would kill anyone now who would think her half white half black great granddaughter should be treated second class. It is amazing how racism disappears when you have relatives that are not your same racial group.

I have cousins that are half white and half black. My neice is of half hispanic descent and possibly has black ancestors on her Mexican side. My step neice is full hispanic.


Racism is just silly if it did not cause such real world problems. I don't apologize for being white but do recognize I got some advantages in life probably because of it, but those priviledges are disappearing fast. The people who were white who did others wrong are the ones who owe apologies. All I can do is live for today and do the best I can to make life better for myself and perhaps help a few others.

I do not get bitter about affirmative action. If you are white and another applicant black and the black gets it because he is black what difference does it really make if your skill sets are equal or almost so?. If there had been no racism in the past and no one invented racism it still might just as well gone to the black person anyway, just luck of the draw and hiring managers opinion. And besides I am sure sometimes being white can help you get work under affirmative action as well in certain circumstances anyway. If white is a certain percent of the population if the firm you apply for a job with has enough black and hispanic people you may be on the short list for being hired.

 

[DolphinDynasty]

I live in a small city 50 miles south of Dallas. We all get along pretty well here. In fact Corsicana is minority majority now. It seems to me, and I work for the public, that a good half of the romantic relationships are interracial, and a good percentage of the kids being part black, part white or part hispanic. You go further south to Mexia and the numbers are even higher. You see even more white with black relationships there. All this racism worry must be in the bigger cities where your neighborhoods are still segregated. I know a white lady that opposed integration that would kill anyone now who would think her half white half black great granddaughter should be treated second class. It is amazing how racism disappears when you have relatives that are not your same racial group.

I have cousins that are half white and half black. My neice is of half hispanic descent and possibly has black ancestors on her Mexican side. My step neice is full hispanic.


Racism is just silly if it did not cause such real world problems. I don't apologize for being white but do recognize I got some advantages in life probably because of it, but those priviledges are disappearing fast. The people who were white who did others wrong are the ones who owe apologies. All I can do is live for today and do the best I can to make life better for myself and perhaps help a few others.

I do not get bitter about affirmative action. If you are white and another applicant black and the black gets it because he is black what difference does it really make if your skill sets are equal or almost so?. If there had been no racism in the past and no one invented racism it still might just as well gone to the black person anyway, just luck of the draw and hiring managers opinion. And besides I am sure sometimes being white can help you get work under affirmative action as well in certain circumstances anyway. If white is a certain percent of the population if the firm you apply for a job with has enough black and hispanic people you may be on the short list for being hired.

Every time I peruse through this post I'm reminded of what my grandmother said she encountered when she first came here in 1968. In the town she moved to, Fanwood, near the Plainfields of New Jersey, they began rioting not long after she moved in. She found out it was basically because too many whites didn't like the fact too many blacks had begun moving in, working and living like everybody else. That's how she saw it because that's how it was. So in her thinking it was more about skin color than that there were new, strange people around.

Now I also watched her and members of her family when driving through a particularly violent section of one the Plainfields rather calmly and silently lock all the doors and windows and go back to driving until the reached a different section that looked no different, also had the same sort of people living there, but was not known for violence and they unlocked the doors and windows and kept going.

To her, it made no logical sense any more than to see another person as bad because their orientation or gender are different.

I think too many humans read too much into situations so they don't have to observe, consider, evaluate and without baseless or already problematic assumptions THEN form

Sure it takes more time and energy and wont allow for stereotyping or misunderstandings or tired old bullshit. I think that's more the clincher than familial or social influence or politics or culture. People like stereotyping, grouping people like they group objects/things, they like not understanding since that's easier than learning the right of it and they like assumptions because they come about faster than communication and patience.

I recognize that quite a few posters to this thread are angry, angry and want thins like affirmative action and social perception of threat or harm by way of some "group' or "kind' to not exist.

Okay, so we'd have to work on lowering the efficacy of any society in bringing out their baseless group wide assumptions in the first place, which is a heck of a lot harder than just saying it. Especially when that not what mot people want because again they like it the way things were instead f appreciating how things are now.

Also although I made it pretty clear this is how any group focuses on relating to any other group, I think too many posters are going to try and twist this so I'm somehow being mean to white people.

As I hate and fear all humans equally then I make no distinction based on stupid shit that nobody should or could change anyway.

So in essence, BH is right in that racism is silly but because we have some many world wide problems stemming from it then sadly it is still very much an issue we all could do just a little more about even if it only to not do anything to make it worse than it already is by ripping out some of the only thing, a bit misguided as they are still, that are set to try and alleviate the negative effects of our own species-wide learned misperceptions.

 

[Toni]

Does your post take into consideration the constellation it was in when you posted it?

Never mind. I had mistakenly thought you had some background in statistics.

Your reply to me and also to spike lets me know I was wrong.