Yeah, only white people enslave non-white people. Never existed before the medieval period. No asians, blacks or american aboriginals ever enslaved any one ever in the entire history of the human race. EVER.
Are blind people racist? Hopefully not.
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You are right, that doesnât mean that Daedalus is completely wrong though,
The sense in which he is right is that no matter how many people I meet, everybody claimâs that they are not racist, and theyâre not.
But if your skin is not white, you are still denied a lot of privileges in this world.
In this sense, the amount of people that are racist isnât important, the fact that the deck is stacked against you is. Just pointing to an established definition gets you nowhere really, when the established system is whats keeping you down.
Actually, I take it to mean that if you look at the world and just use the dictionary to judge reality, you get an incomplete picture, in essence, you are putting the cart before the horse.
this was a pretty good bit. is the rest of his material this funny?
You thought it was funny because you found it to be true. And thatâs awesome. There are lots of comics I donât find funny who speak different kinds of truth to different kinds of people.
Aamer should be able to make fun of white people because white people are funny, not because white people have historically oppressed non-white people. All races, all cultures are funny. In terms of comedy, I donât believe anything should be off limits.
Systemic racism is, I agree, much more important than individual racism. The latter will always exist, regardless of what we do. The former needs to be destroyed wherever itâs found.
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I didnât see it as unfunny either. He wasnât celebrating privilege, just highlighting how weird it is that people think itâs normal or doesnât exist. Being a SWM is a pretty sweet deal sometimes.
Agreed. And many of the comments on the website agree that heâs illustrating white, male privilege, not celebrating âwhite powerâ or anything. I think their reading of the bit was somewhat off, actually.
Which came first, the racism, or the established system? Iâd argue that the established system has to be based on people practicing racism in order to become established in the first place, so attempting to base the definition of racism on the existence of an established system of racism really puts the cart before the horse. It also results in a definition that does nothing to discourage racial bigotry, so long as you can claim that your racial group hasnât had power over the recipient racial group at any time.
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There was another radio interview where Luis CK mentioned his Mexican heritage, Thatâs ones pretty good too. Especially because the DJâs make some really awkward racist comments.
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I think maybe youâre confusing bigotry and racism⌠Coates talks about the recent scandal with Alec Baldwin using homophobic terms, and that yes, he can both support gay marriage and be homophobic. He talks about his own youthful homophobia. But racism is a structure, thatâs just the way it is. this doesnât mean all POC are great wonderful people with no hate in their hearts â it means that there are structures and institutions, historically built up over time to privilege white males over other peopleâŚ
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wait, what? did you just make an on-topic post? this thread clearly derailed immediately.
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this sounds like the kind of zero tolerance approach
Not at all. Itâs a call to be aware of your thought processes. What youâre talking about is action. Should we treat all transgressions as equal? No. Clearly there is more impact in one direction than the other, but the core problem is the same: People making judgments about others based on race. No âreverseâ needed.
If you are white and think black people are less than human because they are black, you are racist and wrong.
If you are black and think white people are inhuman and to boot, they donât treat you as fully human, Then you are racist, but youâre not completely wrong.
It doesnât really matter why you are racist I think. Even if people of a particular race abuse you, it is still wrong to hate the next person of that same race. Is it justified? Maybe. A lot of people on here seem to think so, but the point is that itâs still racism and itâs still wrong.
If youâre racist youâre not open to letting that other person show you who they are and whatâs important to them. Youâre taking that away from them and stuffing them in a predefined box of expectations. It doesnât work with sexism, sexual preferences or religion any better than it does with racism.
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Kinda my point. Apologies for the double post btw.
OMG⌠that is the cutest little boy ever⌠âNO! NO! NO!â No means no.
[quote=âNonentity, post:82, topic:15578â]
Thereâs already been solid evidence given in this thread that this is not the definition. If youâre going to deny that, back up your argument. Otherwise, the person sticking their fingers in their ears is you.[/quote]
Iâm not playing little semantic proof-text shenanigans, Iâm describing a phenomenon.
Think of it this way: the trans-atlantic slave trade was racist. But trade networks donât have feelings and emotions. Economics doesnât have a mind that it can make up. It is a system, a context, a non-person. So those things that do not have emotions or feelings or prejudice can also be racist. So racism canât just be about what Cleetus thinks â itâs also economics. And law. And religion. And a bunch of other things that arenât individual people.
What racism is is bigger than one personâs individual little fee-fees. It is context, history, society. I canât imagine youâd claim that the slave trade (or interracial marriage laws, or school segregation, or whatever) WASNâT racist, since that would be denying reality, and I assume youâre a reasonable person that doesnât deny reality. So racism canât just be limited to what is in an individualâs brain. Things without individual brains can also be racist. In fact, they sometimes are.
Which is what I mean when I say âthatâs what it is.â Thatâs what it is. Context. Society. Economics. Religion. Racism is peopleâs prejudices but it isnât just that, because thereâs more than just that.
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Edmund Morgan (American slavery, American Freedom) argues the system came first, so does David Roediger (Wages of Whiteness). How society is structured helps to shape how we understand the world.
I guess I donât see racism as a structure, I see racism as an internal [mis]understanding. From there it can be institutionalized, but it begins inside with preconceptions that we allow to over-ride or co-opt our own observations.
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But our preconceptions about people are in part (large part) created by the social structures around usâwe donât live in vacuums, we live in society. Do you think weâre born hateful and bigoted, and we have to be taught not to be? do you think that white people who think that blacks are all thugs got that idea from ignorance of black people, or from images fed to them via popular culture, for example?
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Iâd be interested to hear your ideas of racial stereotypes which are not harmful in some way. Even so-called âpositiveâ stereotypes like the âwise and peaceful American Indianâ or the âstudious Asian math & science whizâ are ultimately harmful because they reduce entire populations into caricatures and create unrealistic and unfair expectations.
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I might offer a somewhat radical opinion on which came first though by bringing up Xenophobia.
It is a constant that we humans make outsiders different, and I believe this is what best explains how racism came about. Sure, a few guys might think theyâre better than everybody else but its the group think that makes it destructive.
So Iâm not so sure that racism can be fought on anything other than on a systemic level, I mean when we finally have a level playing field for black and white people, do the individual opinions of a few racist people really matter?
Could we actually force them to think differently? should we?
Today white people get privileges because they are white, not because they ask for them.
They canât refuse these privileges even if they wanted to. This is because they donât really get privileges in a real sense, they are privileged in that they are not denied anything because of the color of their skin.
They donât even have to think theyâre better because they are white.
They could believe black people are better and more deserving, act on this and fight racism everywhere, they will still be privileged.
In this sense, talking about racism on a grand scale seems like the only thing to do.
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The slave trade, in the absence of the racist people who were involved in it or accepted it, was not racist. It had no opinion on other races, it was a set of actions being carried out by people. In the absence of those people, it would not exist at all.
Social structures do not exist without groups of people who act in the same way or have the same beliefs. Racist people, exhibiting racism, in groups, both created and sustain the phenomenon and the social structures you are talking about. Just because those social structures are independent of any single person who is part of the structure does not make the social structure into its own entity separate from the actions and beliefs of those within it.
And just because you donât have enough of a critical mass of people exhibiting a particular racist mindset to create an ongoing system of injustice does not mean that the group there is is not exhibiting racism.
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