i think i may be a racist..... and i dont like it

[mswas]

@Kalhoun

I would say that your book is generally correct, however, physical attraction is physical attraction. I’m not going to sleep with someone if I don’t find them physically attractive…regardless of what I think of them as a person. The attraction thing, in my mind, is completely separate from the love thing. Though love can blur the lines a little, it doesn’t erase it.

Except that genetics are an integral part of race. You make your attraction decisions by basically smelling their genes via their phermones, and that helps you to determine attraction. That’s the nature part of it. The nurture part is the cultural component of race, which helps you decide if you like big asses or little ones, big lips or thin lips, rounder face or more angular face. So attraction and race cannot be seperated. People don’t come piecemeal, they are full people that are the blending of all characteristics into a seemless whole.

It is perfectly fine to discriminate based upon race, because there are genetic and cultural reasons as to why you do not feel a kinship with that person. The racism that we try to combat, and lose sight of once in a while, is the irrational fear of someone who is only superficially different.

Judging someone as different from oneself is a different thing from judging them as a threat to oneself because of those differences.

Class is definitely a part of it, poor people don’t tip well, which is actually a shame, because waitstaff is a job generally held by the poor, and if those people tipped well, the waitstaff would have more money to spend in the community, and as money is spent more freely, it cycles through the community faster creating in effect, more money. So if a particular race is part of a particular class in your area, then that says something about them, and if your experience shows that it is not isolated, then making a cultural inference about your particular data set, is far from unreasonable.

Erek

[Maastricht]

Maybe this thread is relevant?

[Contrapuntal]

@kanicbird

In my book you are racist if you would desire one ‘race’ over another for a mate, in itself there is nothing wrong w/ racism, it is called free will.

So if I, a white guy, were to prefer a black woman as a mate, I would be a racist?

[kanicbird]

So if I, a white guy, were to prefer a black woman as a mate, I would be a racist?

Yes, and a sexist.

And if you as a white guy, were to prefer a black man as a mate, you would be a racist and a sexist.

[mhendo]

@mswas

Except that genetics are an integral part of race.

Did race suddenly re-emerge as a biological category while i wasn’t looking?

[mhendo]

@kanicbird

And if you as a white guy, were to prefer a black man as a mate, you would be a racist and a sexist.

Do words, for you, actually have any meaning even remotely related to their actual usage in the real world, kanicbird?

[xbuckeye]

We all have racist tendencies. “Fear of non-self” is the phrase I learned in Sociology 101 and it is a worldwise phenomenon in all societies. In my book you become an asshole when you start acting on your racist impulses. Noticing that a certain ethnic group in you area behaves in a certain way is acclamating yourself to your surroundings. When you start sprinkling dried feces onto their pizzas because they are black, you are a racist asshole. On my bus route, there are a bunch of black guys that always listen to their headphones and talk to each other at the same time (loudly, you can imagine) so I expect it on the bus in the morning. I don’t trip them as they walk down the aisle just because they are black and they are likely to go to the back of the bus, put on their headphones, and shout at each other over the music.

Am I making any sense? I’ve already fixed about 10 typos in this post, I should go take a nap.

[Beware_of_Doug]

As someone who tries pretty hard not to judge people, I almost hate to say this, but I tend to judge minority males more harshly than females, and minority males who are obviously “with” middle-class-looking white females more harshly still. I generally have to choke down a gut feeling that she is attracted to him because he is more macho and patriarchal than us supposedly overcivilized, wimpy, PC white middle-class males. It’s depressing.

[Uzi]

@kanicbird

Yes, and a sexist.

And if you as a white guy, were to prefer a black man as a mate, you would be a racist and a sexist.

Wow, I learn something new every day. I didn’t even realize that because I am not attracted to women with wider hips and faces (Yet if a women isn’t like that I could care less what colour skin she has) that I was equivalent to guys wearing white hoods who string up the local minority. But now I’ve been edumicated. Thanks.

[lissener]

Well, continuing to try to ignore kanicbird and actually follow the sensical part of this thread . . .

Humans evolved a capacity for pattern recognition. In the early days of our species, this helped us learn that lions eat people, and that fire is hot.

However, it’s not a universally infallible trait. We now live in a much more complicated world, where what seem to simple patterns we observe around us are actually much more complex and don’t resolve themselves as simply as “fire is hot.”

Las Vegas survives by taking advantage of the human impulse to assume that just because a thing happens once, it will happen that way again. The fact that Las Vegas pulls in so much cash is proof enough that what SEEMS to be a predictable pattern is not, in fact, always the case.

It’s exactly this impulse–this pattern recognition–that has conditioned the OP into associating certain experiences with certain ethnicities.

Unfortunately, where such pattern recognition breaks down is that it’s necessarily entirely anecdotal–it only accounts for data that you have personally experienced, and does not account for all of the other possible sources of data. It only explains what’s in front of you, but there’s an AWFUL lot that goes on outside of your personal experience.

It’s also unreliable because it’s untested. The first step in processing the data that you’re presented with is to form a hypothesis. Unfortunately, many people make the mistake of confusing this initial hypothesis with the process’s final step, which is the conclusion you draw AFTER testing the hypothesis.

You look at the sun, and your “common sense” tells you that the sun travels around the earth. It would be wrong to consider that a conclusion, when it’s just a hypothesis that remains to be tested.

This is what’s wrong with such hypotheses-taken-as-conclusions as “intelligent design.” We all do this every day; we make assumptions based on whatever information we have at hand. Unfortunately, we often forget that such assumptions can only be hypotheses, and we make the mistake of treating them like conclusions.

(Personally, I think this is even more of an issue with emotionally loaded situations like the one in the OP, with its issues of fairness and gratitude, etc.)

So yes, pope_hentai, those hypotheses you’ve formed are technically racist, but as long as you understand that they are emotional reactions and not valid conclusions, and you continue to consider and examine them, you’ll do all right. We all have such thoughts; it’s when we give our unsupported musings the weight of scientific fact that we get into trouble.

[Ludovic]

@zagloba

Plus, they don’t want to compete with the outcall male prostitutes.

@BubbaDog

Way off base here, zagloba. The OP is a pizza delivery guy and I’m sure elmwood was referring to the choice of pepperoni or cheese.

::::knock knock::::
“Pizza Delivery!”
“Hi Pizza Guy”
“Oh, I forgot my pants!”
“That’s NOOOOOO problem!”
[/hardcore TV]

[davenportavenger]

@Uzi

Wow, I learn something new every day. I didn’t even realize that because I am not attracted to women with wider hips and faces (Yet if a women isn’t like that I could care less what colour skin she has) that I was equivalent to guys wearing white hoods who string up the local minority. But now I’ve been edumicated. Thanks.

kanicbird is misusing the term but racists aren’t just guys in white hoods. All white people in the western world are racists, because we profit by white privilege. This message board is really fucked up about race and this thread is just one more example of it. mswas, I’m looking at you.

[Uzi]

@davenportavenger

All white people in the western world are racists, because we profit by white privilege.

I’d be interested in you explaining this that doesn’t make it sound like ‘whitey’ is keeping the ‘coloured folk’ down.

[davenportavenger]

@Beware of Doug

As someone who tries pretty hard not to judge people, I almost hate to say this, but I tend to judge minority males more harshly than females, and minority males who are obviously “with” middle-class-looking white females more harshly still. I generally have to choke down a gut feeling that she is attracted to him because he is more macho and patriarchal than us supposedly overcivilized, wimpy, PC white middle-class males. It’s depressing.

And I think this has put me off white guys for life. Good night, everybody!

[davenportavenger]

@Uzi

I’d be interested in you explaining this that doesn’t make it sound like ‘whitey’ is keeping the ‘coloured folk’ down.

White people profit greatly by our position in society. Being able to walk down the street without getting harassed by cops, not having to worry about a waitress spitting in your food because “you people” are bad tippers, not being prejudged as a thief or a rapist… those are all daily privileges white people exercise just by being born. And there’s nothing that most of us do to rid ourselves of these advantages, in fact, there’s not much we CAN do unless we’re willing to dismantle the system of privilege. We profit from racism in the same way that a “real” racist profits when people of color aren’t allowed to compete with him for jobs, or aren’t allowed to affect the outcome of an election, or aren’t allowed to “compete” with them for mates. (I am thinking of Jim Crow type laws.) Maybe today’s racists are fueled more by apathy than outright malice, but make no mistake, it’s still racism. And judging from some of the blatantly racist things I’m reading in this thread, we’re not running short on the good old blatant racism either. Smartest messageboard on the Internet!

Unpacking the invisible knapsack–READ THIS.

[Nilor]

@davenportavenger

White people profit greatly by our position in society. Being able to walk down the street without getting harassed by cops, not having to worry about a waitress spitting in your food because “you people” are bad tippers, not being prejudged as a thief or a rapist.

I agree with your premise, being white (just like being a man) confers some sociatal advantages. What I’m not sure about, and the link you gave doesn’t help, is what should be done?

De/Reconstructing society is not a possible solution. There are far too many people who are blatantly racist/sexist and don’t care. Should you give up the profit you gain by being white? Perhaps by oinking at every cop you see, just so you can be harassed? Or should we penalize cops who follow black people around? Neither of those solutions is good. The latter being far too hard to prove or demonstrate, and the former being a meaningless statement. And besides, how are you going to ‘give up’ stores stocking the music you like? Request that they stock other music, which doesn’t sell as well?

Is ‘raising consciousness’ the best solution?

All white people in the western world are racists, because we profit by white privilege

I disagree with this, however. Just because you profit by virtue of being white/male/whatever does not mean that you are racist/sexist/*ist. As I see it, there are two problems with that idea. One: It is just as racist as the white people in the western world might be. Two: Because of the definition of ‘white privilege’ it implies that being racist is impossible to escape or reduce.

[kanicbird]

Wow, I learn something new every day. I didn’t even realize that because I am not attracted to women with wider hips and faces (Yet if a women isn’t like that I could care less what colour skin she has) that I was equivalent to guys wearing white hoods who string up the local minority. But now I’ve been edumicated. Thanks

Again, racism, by itself is not a ‘bad’ thing, but a normal part of humanity. What you do w/ racism one has could make your actions ‘bad’.

Do words, for you, actually have any meaning even remotely related to their actual usage in the real world, kanicbird?

rac·ism Audio pronunciation of “racism” ( P ) Pronunciation Key (rszm)
n.

1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race.
   From http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=racism

My usage seems to fit #2 very well, much better then most of you are using it.

[Kalhoun]

@mswas

Except that genetics are an integral part of race. You make your attraction decisions by basically smelling their genes via their phermones, and that helps you to determine attraction. That’s the nature part of it. The nurture part is the cultural component of race, which helps you decide if you like big asses or little ones, big lips or thin lips, rounder face or more angular face. So attraction and race cannot be seperated. People don’t come piecemeal, they are full people that are the blending of all characteristics into a seemless whole.

It is perfectly fine to discriminate based upon race, because there are genetic and cultural reasons as to why you do not feel a kinship with that person. The racism that we try to combat, and lose sight of once in a while, is the irrational fear of someone who is only superficially different.

Judging someone as different from oneself is a different thing from judging them as a threat to oneself because of those differences.

Class is definitely a part of it, poor people don’t tip well, which is actually a shame, because waitstaff is a job generally held by the poor, and if those people tipped well, the waitstaff would have more money to spend in the community, and as money is spent more freely, it cycles through the community faster creating in effect, more money. So if a particular race is part of a particular class in your area, then that says something about them, and if your experience shows that it is not isolated, then making a cultural inference about your particular data set, is far from unreasonable.

Erek

I can’t tell if you’re arguing with me or agreeing with me. I personally find all races attractive, in general. I was referring solely to the physical aspect of it – the social aspect has nothing to do with it. But I’m not going to sleep with someone I find unattractive. I’ve slept with people from different social and economic statuses than myself. My attraction to another person (sexually speaking) is uncluttered by the “nurture” thing you’re talking about.

[Contrapuntal]

@davenportavenger

All white people in the western world are racists, because we profit by white privilege.

(Emphasis mine)
This may be the most largest load of horseshit I’ve heard since joining here. A one day old white baby is a racist?

@kanicbird

2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race.
   From http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=racism

My usage seems to fit #2 very well, much better then most of you are using it.

So “I like black people” is a racist statement. Or even “One should not treat black people differently from white people” is a racist statement.

I would agree that ‘number two’ is a pretty good description of your usage.

[xbuckeye]

@Contrapuntal

(Emphasis mine)
This may be the most largest load of horseshit I’ve heard since joining here. A one day old white baby is a racist?

Maybe not at one day, but sometime in the first month since this is when babies start to recognize Mom and Dad and babies prefer mom and dad so they are little white-hooded sleeper wearin’ racist sexist homophobes. Of course, if they are children of minorities, they are only partly as bad as those damn little racist white babies. :rolleyes:

With that broad of a definition of racism, we should just eliminate the white races and make it all better…right? Wait…that sounds awfully racist.

Some of you people are reeediculous.