Is it wrong to be racist?

[qqwref]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

Completely depends on the degree.

If you're taking statistical trends and assuming Asians are more likely to be good at math, blacks are more likely to talk a certain way, etc. before you meet them, that's reasonable. Making decisions due to observed patterns is an extremely useful skill. Of course, I'd expect an intelligent person to be ready to immediately think the opposite about an individual if they see evidence that that person doesn't fit the trend.

On the other hand, if you're discriminating in the sense of hating everyone from a given race, or considering them all inferior or incapable of something a normal person could do - or even attacking someone you don't know just because of their race - you've got a problem. Logic can't justify something like that.

[Patashu]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

Patashu: Racism is only partially self-perpetuating. A lot of it has to do with resources/geography in the first place. When you have access to resources, it's easier to leverage your position and become richer/better off through economies of scale, whereas if you're **** out of luck, you remain **** out of luck. Repeat over multiple generations, and you catalyze a variety of other trends. Some people are just born luckier than others.

If you happen to be born near an ample water supply and area with land that could be cultivated, it's much easier to focus on more advanced, complex things that ultimately create synergies and thus more riches... whereas the person born in a place with very scare resources or poor leadership is going to be focused primarily on survival and survival only.

There are COUNTLESS examples of this, but the general idea is that racism is obviously the result of race, and race is the result of geography, the environment, resources, etc.

Of course it's not the only cause, but it's a major cause in countries where multiple ethnicities co-exist and the only difference between them is their respective 'momentums' and how they're perceived by others (= how kindly they're treated, how harshly they're prosecuted, etc). If every black person in the US suddenly lost all the traits that everyone used to differentiate races but we somehow tracked them over the generations, they'd rise up from being an underclass, as there's no way to discriminate against them - except by their lower levels of wealth, and white poor people are better off on average than black poor people, because of racist effects (like choosing who to hire for a job, being more likely to prosecute and find guilty for petty crime, etc etc)

[MrRubix]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

What you're describing is not really a "cause" but rather a perpetuated effect resulting from the pre-established class systems to begin with. If two races in a society had equal statuses, we would expect a 50-50 shot at seeing one eventually outpace the other, and this is NOT what we see. Yes, we may see cases of discrimination against choosing who to hire, but I ask you who's doing the hiring to begin with?

ALL of this, at its very core, stems from the fundamental geographic distributions and resource access. From there you can extrapolate every other effect. You imply that if you removed differentiating factors (I am assuming by this you mean physical appearance or things along those lines?), there wouldn't be much difference in the underlying factors. This is, in fact, untrue. Probability alone shows you how you can take a handful of traits and figure out how likely it is that that person came from a specific distribution.

Studies like these have been done ad nauseum.

It's a little misleading to say that racial perception is a "cause" because, while technically true, it's not very meaningful. Racial perceptions exist because they are largely reinforced by kernels of truth. You can't remove the indicators and imply that the underlying traits are somehow indistinguishable, because that's demonstratively false.

[xxxim_a_noobxxx]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

I think it's alright to have pride for your race but to generalize a race based on something is wrong.





EXP:say someone of a different race caused me some sort of emotional pain it would be that person to blame not the race itself..

[Iam90]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

What you're describing is not really a "cause" but rather a perpetuated effect resulting from the pre-established class systems to begin with. If two races in a society had equal statuses, we would expect a 50-50 shot at seeing one eventually outpace the other, and this is NOT what we see. Yes, we may see cases of discrimination against choosing who to hire, but I ask you who's doing the hiring to begin with?

ALL of this, at its very core, stems from the fundamental geographic distributions and resource access. From there you can extrapolate every other effect. You imply that if you removed differentiating factors (I am assuming by this you mean physical appearance or things along those lines?), there wouldn't be much difference in the underlying factors. This is, in fact, untrue. Probability alone shows you how you can take a handful of traits and figure out how likely it is that that person came from a specific distribution.

Studies like these have been done ad nauseum.

It's a little misleading to say that racial perception is a "cause" because, while technically true, it's not very meaningful. Racial perceptions exist because they are largely reinforced by kernels of truth. You can't remove the indicators and imply that the underlying traits are somehow indistinguishable, because that's demonstratively false.

I think you're missing a point here, which is that "racists" in the classic sense of the word don't reinforce their racial perceptions with the kernels of truth you're talking about - they reinforce their racial perceptions through superstition, religion, misguided biology and bigotry. And, subsequently, they devalue a race for being "inferior."

It's not that certain factors such as geography and resource distribution don't advantage certain races over another; Jared Diamond covers that amply. It's that most racists view a race as inherently advantaged over others through the very fiber of their being, and then make the further value judgment that such a race is somehow less valuable/less human for being disadvantaged.

You're muddling up peoples' concepts of negative racial perception; it's quite obvious that when people ask the question "is it ok to be racist?" they mean "is it ok to view a race as inherently inferior, and is it ok to dehumanize/devalue them as a result?" to which none of your points are answers.

[Cavernio]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

Patashu wrote "If every black person in the US suddenly lost all the traits that everyone used to differentiate races but we somehow tracked them over the generations, they'd rise up from being an underclass"

I strongly disagree, for reasons others have mentioned. It is not race which has made black people poor, nor is it racism. It is a stratified social structure. Blacks were not made slaves in North America because they were black, it was because their people were in no position to stop themselves from being caught by fleets of white men. In the same way, it is not only the fact that they are black which keeps poor black people poor. All we'd have to do prove that what you say won't happen would be to follow a large number of poor white families for a few generations to see if they are likely to become unpoor, something which we CAN do now, and which probably has been done.
Our society does not do well with making people 'equal'.

On another note, I agree with Fido. It is not being naive, it is the recognition that labelling an individual based on statistics or first glance suppositions, is just not right. Obviously it is alright to talk about people in groups and to generalize...we sort of have to. It is, however, not alright to think of any given individual in those terms.
For instance, it is not ok to, after seeing a black teenager wearing baggy clothes, think 'oh, he might be part of a gang, I should stay away from him, and I'm totally justified in thinking that because I'm just looking out for my safety and following statistics which say black teenage guys in baggy clothes are much more likely to be a gang member.' A much better thought process, imo, would be 'oh, he's wearing baggy clothes and he's black, he might be part of a gang, but that would be pretty slanderous and offensive of me to think that right away...I don't want people summing ME up in a glance.' Unless you want people to sum you up in a glance I suppose...in which case, if you'd like to be thought of as your stereotype, I guess my point is irrelevant.

edit: I guess I shouldn't think negatively of all gangs though should I...

[MrRubix]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

Iam90: No, incorrect. Where do you think the bigotry comes from in the first place? It is certainly muddled by ignorance, religion, misguided scientific facts, politics, and so forth -- but that's just a sort of classic group-effect. The racism itself is ground in kernels of truth and perpetuated by other Darwinian means (namely the environment, distribution of resources, and other biological impulses built into survival traits).

"It's not that certain factors such as geography and resource distribution don't advantage certain races over another; Jared Diamond covers that amply. It's that most racists view a race as inherently advantaged over others through the very fiber of their being, and then make the further value judgment that such a race is somehow less valuable/less human for being disadvantaged. "

You are retarded, btw. Go look into "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Diamond. He argues the exact opposite of what you're saying.

[Vendetta21]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

Iam90: No, incorrect. Where do you think the bigotry comes from in the first place? It is certainly muddled by ignorance, religion, misguided scientific facts, politics, and so forth -- but that's just a sort of classic group-effect. The racism itself is ground in kernels of truth and perpetuated by other Darwinian means (namely the environment, distribution of resources, and other biological impulses built into survival traits).

"It's not that certain factors such as geography and resource distribution don't advantage certain races over another; Jared Diamond covers that amply. It's that most racists view a race as inherently advantaged over others through the very fiber of their being, and then make the further value judgment that such a race is somehow less valuable/less human for being disadvantaged. "

You are retarded, btw. Go look into "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Diamond. He argues the exact opposite of what you're saying.

Gun, Germs, and Steel refutes the psychic unity of mankind but it doesn't tell you that black people are going to become gangsters, mexicans are going to be landscapers, and people in the south are going to be lost in cyclical virulent spiral of inherited Scottish Honor culture.

I think you don't understand Diamond's argument.

[MrRubix]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

Cavernio: Also incorrect. Again, just because something might be "offensive" doesn't make it less/more true or likely. We, as humans, find racism offensive because we typically don't like being typecasted as somehow being equivalent with our averages within our distribution. The problem comes in how we try to close these divisions between races, which do exist. One thing is for certain: You cannot get rid of racism by simply pretending it does not exist. The best you can do is try to subsidize the weaknesses in one group to give them a chance to catch up to the rest of society until certain "negative" idiosyncrasies start to fade out. This is, of course, incredibly difficult to do once certain trends have taken hold.

Examining quotes from Fido:

"The only thing the ethnicity of a person effects is how somebody looks"
-While true, that is not the only thing we can know about someone. People who evolved into one race other the other grew up in a different environment, and people from different environments have, over time, on average, acquired different cultural, social, intellectual, financial, religious, and political values.

"Why can't we judge people based on the character of a person instead of where they were from originally? Obviously there's more to it than that but at it's core, that's all racism is."
-Absolutely -- but this case is muddled. The "random distributions" become skewed because, say, if you only focus on people of different races within your like-environment, you're naturally going to find a greater degree of homogeneity. However, this is not true if we delve into random sampling. It's always a good idea to get to know someone before putting them in a certain category -- just as silly as it would be for me to say that "Because all fishes of species X are generally tastier than fishes Y, I will assume that all X fish are tastier than Y fish." There's obviously going to be overlap even if the statistical/empirical averages hold up to be true via Law of Large Numbers.

[MrRubix]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

Gun, Germs, and Steel refutes the psychic unity of mankind but it doesn't tell you that black people are going to become gangsters, mexicans are going to be landscapers, and people in the south are going to be lost in cyclical virulent spiral of inherited Scottish Honor culture.

I think you don't understand Diamond's argument.

Holy mother of God.

That's not what Diamond argues at all. His entire argument is surrounded about the concept of resource distribution and effects of geography. Hence, how one society gets access to GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL over another and how this eventually leads to perceived racial superiorities.

You people need to just hang yourselves for stupidity.

[Vendetta21]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

Holy mother of God.

That's not what Diamond argues at all. His entire argument is surrounded about the concept of resource distribution and effects of geography. Hence, how one society gets access to GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL over another and how this eventually leads to perceived racial superiorities.

You people need to just hang yourselves for stupidity.

No the part about aborigines refutes the psychic unity of mankind and the part about resources explains pretty simply a non-racist explanation for why Europe came out on top but it doesn't justify being racist which is what my example was talking about.

You're making some weird argument justifying some arcane definition of racism and it seems like you aren't getting much disagreement about the fact that culture, geography, and environment make a difference but it trying to defend that as some sort of racism is kinda dumb IMO and it comes across like the people who point out the flaws in global climate change theories and then the subsequent effect is people think global climate change is bunk.

[MrRubix]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

How about you read the book first before you act as if you know what you're talking about.

You're putting up strawmen arguments. The point here isn't to "justify" racism -- nobody here is doing that. It's to say that racism has its grounds in the environment -- there are statistical truths to racism. The fact that it is offensive does not make it any less true.

We're all in general agreement that it's generally a bad idea to typecast a particular person before we get to know them. But it's also an unavoidable fact that, on average, people on certain races will fit certain trends.

The question is what we plan to do about that on a micro and macro scale.

[Vendetta21]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

How about you read the book first before you act as if you know what you're talking about.

You're putting up strawmen arguments. The point here isn't to "justify" racism -- nobody here is doing that. It's to say that racism has its grounds in the environment -- there are statistical truths to racism. The fact that it is offensive does not make it any less true.

We're all in general agreement that it's generally a bad idea to typecast a particular person before we get to know them. But it's also an unavoidable fact that, on average, people on certain races will fit certain trends.

The question is what we plan to do about that on a micro and macro scale.

No you're trying to redefine what we mean by racism through mental gymnastics it isn't a strawman it's a pretty straightforward point.

The book is an irrelevant tangent to the basic point. You're acting like the guy who read one book that blew his mind and then wanted to start arguing based on it via Atlas Shrugged except in this case you've picked a good book.

[Staiain]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

I'm not sure if I shoud call myself a racist or not. I don't hate people because of their race, but behavior/culture/attitude.

For example: I don't honestly like peope from eastern europe, countrie like poland, latvia, russia etc because lots of them come to my country as bandits stealing the **** out us then they steal a truck or something and transport all the stolen goods to their home country and sells it for major profit. I honestly never have had the chance of knowing a single person from those countries that behave what is by our standards acceptable.

I used to live in a dorm with 3 rooms, and when I moved in there was a swedish girl, and a swedish-turkish guy living there. but ehen that girl moved out a latvian moved in, partying all night, stealing all the bandwidth on the internet. When he moved out a new latvian guy moved in, he was having his friends sleep there and use up all the hot water in the shower including stealing my shampoo. Even use the washing machine all the time, he even threw my wet laundry on the floor when he needed to use the machine.

I don't know if this is racism or not though.


Another example:

When I lived with my dad there was this house close by, always foreigners moved in there.

One day I was on my way to a soccer training about 10 years ago, suddenly 2 black dudes alot older than me started beating me up like only a minute after I left my house for NO REASON AT ALL. And their younger sister stole my bike...

Do I hate black people for that? No.

Do I always assume that people from that country find it hard to fit into our society and follow our rules when they come to this country ? Yes.


Hope I'm not offending anyone with this.

[Vendetta21]

Re: Is it wrong to be racist?

I've also read The 10,000 Year Explosion which is the argument you're making on steroids still tangential.