I said she crinkled her nose, not that she filed a harrassment suit against me.
Her exact words were, “I don’t date black guys. Nothing against them, I’m just not attracted” and that was it. I also know that she has a number of black friends.
Do you need an affidavit from her?
Why are people surprised that someone might feel this way? I’ve heard variations of this for people of many different races all my life…
If it is racism, then the concept of racism becomes watered-down to the point of uselessness.
I don’t see how this debate can progress if we can’t get beyond the negative connotations that the terms “racist” and “racism” are charged with.
I think (correct me if I’m wrong) the OP wanted to debate whether or not the behavior of race-exclusive attraction should be considered racist, NOT whether or not it should be considered morally reprehensible.
If I, speaking truthfully, operating under an accepted definition of racism, and truthfully informed of your behavior, call you a racist, that is not prejudice, it is a fact. Whether or not you think racism, under the accepted definition, is necessarily bad is a moot point.
Exactly. This point acknowledges the importance of the definition of the term “racism” in this debate, and also I tend to agree with the sentiment that race-exclusive attraction is too benign to be included under any useful definition of “racism”.
Well, things like the “dumb blonde” cliche. It’s not really about race, but it is preconceived notion about a group. Or that lawyers are all liars. Someone might easily say, “I’d never go out with a lawyer.”
But your point is well-taken. Many–if not most-- preconceived notions about people are indeed related to race or ethnicity (or class, and often regional origins).
I was wondering about the opposite side of the coin. I remember a while back there was an “Asian girlfriend” concept at college–that some men would only have eyes for Asian women. Does that make them racist?
Opps, sorry. Let me rephrase that. I reversed your point. While racism almost always is about preconceived notions about people’s character, there are times when it isn’t. Often it’s about class and power. (There’s the “Uncle Tom” phenomenon, for example.)
Sure. You’ve defined yourself as someone who expresses racial discrimination. There’s a big leap from “easier or harder” or “same basic beliefs” to “only dating XYZ.”
Where?
I see an expression of a preference for shared religious beliefs, but I do not see any racial expressions.
John_Stamos’_Left_Ear writes:
> I was at work and went on a coffee run. One co-worker said she wanted her
> coffee black and I made the usual joke “like your men” and her nose crinkled in
> a most disapproving way. I thought she found the comment either distasteful or
> a cliche, but instead it was simply because she didn’t like black folks.
You must know a different class of people than I do. If I had made such a joke (well, supposed joke, although it’s not actually funny) to friends, I would at least have gotten a nasty stare and at most would have been told to shut up. If I had made such a joke at work, I would have risked being counseled for racist remarks.
Well, I guess the “class” of people I work with tend to think that the movie Airplane! is funny (since that joke was featured prominetly in it). I’ll stick with my class, thanks. Your class sound like it is collectively in more dire need of a blow job than any white man in history.
(That line came from another movie that your class probably doesn’t find funny. Another reason your class needs the stick removed from their ass.)
The conversation led me to my favorite coffee line - “I like my coffee like my women, bitter and imported” - instead of Political Correctness pontificating. The people I know are not so shallow as to filter everything through a “PC Screening” especially when they know the person talking. And I work with a wide variety of people across genders, sexual orientation and race.
But, by all means, if sanctimonious attempts to make yourself seem like a better “class” then the general riff-raff boosts your self-esteem, don’t let your complete ignorance of everyone actually involved stop you…
It just occured to me that this is in Great Debates, not The Pit - I was floating between threads in both forums. If I stepped over any lines above, please edit as needed, delete the post and accept my apologies.
I don’t think, if it relates to “attraction”, that it signifies anything at all. What controls our sexual attractions is both deep and mysterious and shallow and even more mysterious. Sometimes I will look at a group of women and not, for the life of me, be able to identify what attracts me to the one I fancy. And it isn’t reliable or predictable.
Not mere “preference” this. Neither “easier” rather than “harder”, nor simple “shar[ing] the same basic beliefs.”
This is to exclude persons because they are not members of a given ethnicity or religion, without regard to their personal qualities. It is to reject the aid of the Samaritan.
Pay better aqttention to your Fora. We’ll probably survive that post, but don’t let it happen again.
[ /Moderator Mode ]
Sorry. You keep inserting ethnicity into a religious equation. I am not buying it.
Your Samaritan analogy is also flawed in that they are speaking of selecting a life partner (where shared values make up a major component of compatibility), not choosing whether or not to give or receive aid.
Had the comment been that one would not marry outside the Ashkenazim community, you might have gotten away with your “racial” indignation (although I would have still held out for an explanation regarding shared values before I leveled a judgment), but simply claiming that a shared religious background is “racist” makes no sense.
The quoted post serves to demonstrate only that so-called ‘racial’ differences are arbitrary. A point with which I obviously agree. Nonetheless, as brownie55 has demonstrated those arbitrary differences do form the basis of demonstrated racial discrimination. Describing that discrimination in some other form of words does not change its character.
The relevant fact is that a person is excluded from a group on account of an inherent quality rather than the content of their character. Correspondingly, admission to that group depends on an inherent quality instead of character.
From the abstract to the material; It’s the same as deciding to only employ Zoroastrians in your bakery.
Has being PC really come to this? The fact that it’s even possible to have a debate as to whether the people who turn you on need to constitute an ethnically/racially/religiously representative sample of the local population is staggering to me.
No, I don’t think its racist to prefer people from particular ethnic groups, any more than saying that tall/short/fat/skinny/buck-toothed/big-nosed/pimply/lisping/giggly/surly/young/old/pasty/swarthy/slobby/fastidious/shy/loud/etc./etc./etc. people do or do not turn you on.
How people look is an important part of why you find them attractive. Different people find different attributes attractive, and it’s seems silly to suggest that we all have a duty to overcome our ‘prejudices’ and be attracted to everyone equally. Would we end up with individual quotas of different physical types we’d be legally obliged to boff in order to ensure that no group was missing out on their legal allowance of nookie?
Ditto for the whole religion thing - shared backgrounds and interests make relationships work. Hence why college-educated white-collar types tend to end up with other college-educated white-collar types, and so on. Or is that discrimination too? Maybe white christian college-educated professionals should only be allowed to marry black muslim non-educated craft workers in the interests of diversity.
I swear, the only nation that has ever been able to approach the US in its fanatical obsession with people’s ethnicity is Apartheid-era South Africa. In fact, if you imagine the conversation taking place around a Capetown water-cooler in the late eighties, with your co-worker 'fessing up to an attraction to Coloureds, it would have generated the same amount of prurient interest, but reversed 180 degrees.
If consenting adults are involved and its in private, who they hump or fantasize over or whatever is entirely up to them. Whether they fancy people who look like Marilyn Manson or Queen Latifah is none of my business, and I don’t really want to know.
I do not think such an attitude in itself is racist, but it would cause me to consider whether there were racist reasons as to why the person had that attitude. “Black” is too broad a characteristic to result in an automatic repulsion.
There is nothing RACIAL about Jewishness.
You first insist on making a religious issue a racial issue, then you keep dragging in red herrings about the good works of Samaritans or employment of bakers when the statement was explicitly about choosing as life partner–an action that is fundamentally different than good works, employment, or any number of other human interactions. Note that brownie55 did not even make the claim that s/he would refuse to date someone of another religion except in the case of seeking a spouse, so there is no evidence in this thread that s/he even discriminates in most social interactions.
Now, you may find such an a priori determination inappropriate, but the reasons you have offered to oppose it have been based on errors.
Would you be making the same issue had brownie55 stated “I will only date people with black hair”? Would you claim that that is racist?
The question is, is the dislike (or fetish, in the case of people who date only blacks or Asians or something) of members of a certain race due to a genuine dislike (or extreme like) of certain physical traits which often just happen to be tied to ethnicity, or it is because of the social conditioning someone faces wrt black people (or other groups)? True, perhaps someone might have an inherent dislike of dark skin and find it inattractive it itself just like others hate long hair or tall people, but I don’t think it’s as likely as a lack of attraction based on social conditioning. How else can you explain the fact that the vast majority of peope date and marry within their race? It can’t all be inborn; it’s social which means we have the opportunity to process it instead of just saying “well, I likes what I likes” and never questioning WHY.
I’ve also known people who say they wouldn’t date blacks but would have no problem dating people with dark skin (such as some Middle Easterners and East Indians), in which case I don’t think you can say it’s a genuine physical dislike of a characteristic, it’s a rejection of someone based on their race or ethnicity. And in that case, I think it is racist. And I think if someone said “I don’t date black people” I would take it as racist, whereas I wouldn’t if someone said “I don’t find dark skin as attractive as light skin,” and then were consistent in their dating, rejecting all dark-skinned people and not just those from a certain maligned racial group.
" . . . ground up and in the freezer."