Ah. The whole “It’s natural to discriminate!” argument.
If discrimination is so natural, why shouldn’t we have Affirmative Action? Why should white people get to benefit from all this “natural” discrimination more than people of color?
My pessimism abut human nature is tempered by what Tamerlane observed: that cultures can and do evolve in a positive direction. I agree with Tamerlane’s historical assessment (but I did find his/her chosen levels were too “rose-colored.”) So, there’s hope. But the human nature thing means progress will be slow, fitful, and probably forever incomplete.
Has anyone said, in this thread, that we shouldn’t have affirmative action?
When applying to a college, or interviewing for a job, or putting in for a promotion, or whatever, I know I’m going to be discriminated against because of the color of my skin; that doesn’t mean I’m saying it shouldn’t happen; I’m merely noting that it does.
It’s correct. Like I said, cites avail nothing when a liberal is determined to believe what he was told.
The idea that some dimwitted eighteen year old with two illegitimate children is poor all her life because of generational plundering is bullshit. You ought to know better.
Regards,
Shodan
You said “whites are twice as likely to be shot by police as blacks” – that’s very obviously not true. It’s not the same thing as twice as many white people shot by police (which hasn’t been proven either, but at least it’s not categorically false, like your “twice as likely” assertion).
It’s entirely reasonable to believe that she’s probably poorer and treated more poorly than she would be were she white but otherwise in the same circumstances.
The same reason why a pure democracy that consists of three wolves and two sheep voting on what’s for dinner is a bad idea. 
At least for the sheep.
Without some standard of justice and fairness to appeal to, if life is seen as basically nothing more than a no-holds-barred contest between groups, the minority will always get screwed in a democratic system. In order to achieve a measure of rights, the minority must appeal to some universal standard, and get on its side members of the majority who are more loyal to that standard than to ‘group rights’.
Well sure, but at the same time, when 65-70% is part of one group, and the remaining 30-35% splits across several other groups, it’s not surprising that the system will be somewhat skewed toward that 70%.
It doesn’t have to be intentional or malicious either, which is I think the crux of a lot of the argument here; a lot of stuff may not necessarily be favorable to minority people, but that doesn’t make it automatically hostile or intentionally malicious.
Case in point- the US is predominantly a nation of Christians, statistically speaking. Therefore Christian holidays, iconography, etc… are very predominant at certain times of year. This does NOT necessarily mean that the holidays or holy days of other faiths are disregarded, but just that as the holidays that most everyone in the country celebrates, they’re kind of bound to be somewhat dominant.
Only if the 70%, collectively, see their interests as different than those of the 30%, and exert their majority power to ensure that their interests take precedence.
When the 70/30 split is defined by “race,” that’s racism.
What I’m saying is that it’s more of a matter of the weight of numbers than anything conscious or malicious. In other words, more can be explained through unconscious or at least not consciously racist economic and social phenomena than can be explained through 1930’s Klan-style racism.
Example: 65-70% of the US is white. 12-15% is black. Is it racist that Johnson and Johnson don’t make black band-aids, or is it just a matter of economics? I’d wager that brown bandaids wouldn’t be profitable, or else they’d already be being made by most companies.
The demographics of voters tend to be such that older, educated white people are going to be the most represented in the electorate, and uneducated young hispanics are going to be the least represented.
http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/demographics
If the educated white people vote for what’s going to benefit them, it’s going to overwhelmingly skew things their way- they vote more, and there are more of them as well. Again, numbers, but not racist.
I’ll agree that if people’s intent when voting is to deliberately vote for or against policies and candidates based on racial considerations, it’s racist, regardless of what the color of your skin was. Obama probably got as many racist votes for him from black people as McCain got from white people voting for him because he was white.
Affirmative action is only possible because “politically correct” caucasians have reduced the amount of discriminating they do against other races, even sometimes performing reverse discrimination against themselves. You do realize that in the United States, caucasians controlled absolutely everything (and still have most of the power today). The Civil War would have never happened if a massive pile of Northern caucasians didn’t fight for it. I am aware there were black soldiers who did their part, but the vast majority of dying was done by caucasians, and the vast industrial resources of the North, invented by people who happened to be of a certain skin color and then managed by those same people, gave the North an unbeatable advantage. Ditto all the other movements. Rosa Parks may have started the ball rolling, but the real power was in the politically connected caucasians who stood with her…
The increasing “diversity” of major institutions in the United States is only possible because the people in charge of those institutions…you know, all those identical looking white guys in the 1960s…decided to stop discriminating.
Anyways, I’m not saying because racism is natural (it probably is, granted) we shouldn’t strive as a species to reduce how much we let these instincts affect our behavior. (theft/rape/murder is “natural” as well, right?). However, it seems grossly unfair as a white person who tries not to be overtly racist or discriminatory if minorities, once put in charge, use their new power to be racist/discriminatory.
No. You’re not getting what I’m saying. It’s the very premise of your argument here that is racist: the idea that there are white interests, which of course white people will vote for, which are distinct from the structure of racism.
If not for racism, the interests of white Americans collectively would not be meaningfully different from the interests of black Americans. There would still be political differences, but there would be no reason for these to correlate at all with color.
I can’t agree with that - to my mind, “racism” is a superiority claim, not merely a “group identification” claim.
Otherwise, any holding of a group identity based on “race” would arguably be “racism”, which strikes me as diluting the term to uselessness.
Now it may well be that people hold group identities based on race (over and above some other factor, such as religion or class) because of a historic and ongoing legacy of racism. That doesn’t mean that the people holding those identities are themselves racist.
For example, Blacks may well conclude that there are “Black interests” (that is, that their group identity based on “race”, defined culturally, matters to them more than other sources of identity) because of a perception or reality of unequal treatment by the authorities. This would not make them “racist” of necessity (of course they may well be, if they assert superiority claims based on it).
Equally, if Blacks have “Black interests”, it follows that Whites in that same society have “White interests”, with the same caveat (albeit, of course, having “White interests” is historically strongly associated with white superiority claims).
I agree with that.
I’m saying that the “white interests” in that scenario can only be racist in nature. There are no such things, except the maintenance of the racist structure itself.
It’s like saying that there are “straight interests,” shared by heterosexuals generally, that are contra gay interests, but have some purpose other than suppressing the equal rights and social participation of gay people. No, there are not.
Apparently, it’s purely racially motivated.
I don’t agree. Maintaining a structure that benefits a group of people (be they straight or be they White) isn’t, in itself, a claim that those people are “superior” - which we both agree is the nature of racism. It’s mere self-interest.
Now, expressing a desire for self-interest may be unjust, if (say) the demands of fairness and justice require relinquishing narrow, identity-group-based self-interest in the name of the greater good of society as a whole.
And admittedly, it is hard, in the case of gays, to see exactly how a straight person’s self-interest is in any way harmed by expanding gay rights - that just leads me to conclude the gay rights example isn’t a great analogy. The reason I conclude that, is that it is very easy to see how some policies (such as affirmative action) are contrary to the narrow self-interest of Whites competing for (say) places in schools and the like. Such preferences are a “zero-sum game” in the way that expanding the right of gays to marry isn’t.
It is no answer to those Whites complaining about such policies that they are “racist” to complain - they may well not be “racist” at all, in that they may have no feelings one way or another about racial superiority: they may simply be pissed at an apparent disadvantage imposed on them, personally, because of their “race”. Rather, the argument (it seems to me) would be that, in such cases, justice and fairness require such policies, even though they are contrary to the narrow self-interest of affected Whites - they are in the overall interests of society as a whole, to rebalance historical and continuing inequities, etc. (not saying I agree or disagree, just that is how I think the argument is more justly framed).
Wanting the best education for your child is incredibly racist.
I voted “not particularly racist” based on my own experience as a white American and having spent a good amount of time in Europe and in Japan. I believe racism exists in the US, of course, but mostly in a non-injurious form.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. What I’m saying is basically an extension of what I said upthread, and that’s that socioeconomic status is fairly firmly coupled and/or correlated to race in the US, and that a lot of what you’re saying is voting for “white” interests isn’t that at all- it’s voting for what benefits the middle class suburbs and not the inner city. Just like voting for what benefits the inner city isn’t “voting black” either.
I think that within a socio-economic group, there’s probably more similarity than difference; what would benefit a white suburbanite would benefit a black one just as much, just like what would benefit a poor inner city person would be the same, regardless of race.
Just to add a little fuel to the fire, which one of these two schools would you rather your children attend? (hint: they’re the two I mentioned earlier, less than a mile apart)
It happens to be that Skyview is majority black, but you can’t argue that its performance sucks balls compared to Moss Haven. Yet somehow, not wanting to send my kids to Skyview means I’m racist?
What in the hell happened to Skyview in 2012? Their performance just nosedived. Looks like it was a fine school in 2010. Enrollment was on a healthy incline while the number of full time teachers was stagnant. Knowing nothing other than what that page shows, it looks like the school was soaking in the benefits from the state by taking every kid they could find while doing zero to improve their services.
At any rate, living in the burbs is not racist and it’s foolish and, frankly, dangerous to suggest otherwise. There are minorities out here in the burbs too, you know.