How do you think international realtions and racial justice intersect?
From Eric Mann’s “Dispatches from Durban,” I got that <b>rascism isn’t just a problem of the U.S., but a worldwide one<./b>. So all nations should cooperate with one another, because their common interests are more important than their differences. But then, why was the U.S. the only country that didn’t show up for the World conference against racism held by the U.N. ?
Well, I’m writing an essay on this with a focus on black struggle and their evolution for justice as well as the international dimensions. The side I’m currently taking is <b>against</b> Mann…unless I find something that changes my mind.
I don’t think reperation’s to South Africa is the solution. I don’t think capitalism is a bad thing. And imperialsm isn’t completely bad either.
First about reperations for slavery: the victims and perpetrators of slavery are dead and gone. ANd who would be paying to who? who do we know was a slave, not juist blacks. And some blacks sold blacks to slavery as well. Reparations doesn’t seem to help much, like it’s more about poor countries wanting money from the rich; Not about about social justice.
And about imperialsm/capitalism: working long hours for low pay in third world countries is better than the alternative of having no job, straving, and suffering. And you can say,why not at least make their working condition’s better? Well, if the wage is increased, there’s no reason for them to bring jobs to those countries in the first place.
I also don’t think those(reperation, anti-capitalism/imperialism) are solutions to ending rasciam. I don’t know what is though.
Reparations are stupid. Want to increase racial tensions, as well as inspire another cycle of racial hatreds…do reparations. The entire concept is flawed, from who gets the money, to simply giving any money at all. It will do nothing but re-ignite the divide between the ‘races’ again. Bad bad bad.
Whats the ‘solution’ to the worldwide problem of racism? IMO its simple…time and exposure. We are ALREADY breaking down racial barriers, IMO. These things don’t happen over night though. However, I think that we are already on the right path, and things like this forum, for example, are a great tool to further erode racism worldwide. I don’t believe that ‘racism’ will EVER go away completely…its almost hard wired into us. But I believe that every year, it receeds a bit further into the background.
As for the rest…no idea what capitalism or imperealism has to do with racism at all. Maybe I’m simply too drunk to get my brain around the issue, but I’m not seeing the point of that part.
I’m not exactly sure, but I’ve been reading a bunch of stuff, and I think capitalism and imperialism might bring about another racism.
Like in comparison to Slavery: the justification of slavery brought about the racism towards blacks. So if big corporations continue using 3rd World countries as “slaves” to work for low wages and harsh conditions, that might ignite another racist attitude and xenophobia against those people.
And not just with 3rd world countries, but also with minorities in the U.S. Since with capitalism, most successful poeple are whites. Then minorities might be looked down as uneducated, inferior, and such, because they’re poor.
While I agree that reparations aren’t likely to help, I can’t agree that the victims of slavery are dead and gone. I think that slavery helped to reinforce an attitude of racial superiority that persists to this day, and that the descendants of slaves, and those who look like they might be descendants of slaves, are still victims of slavery.
I know people who are kind-hearted enough in general, and who would never knowingly hurt or hate anyone, who nevertheless seem afraid of members of minority races, or at least distrustful, and avoid them whenever possible. These are people who don’t want to live in the same neighborhoods, socialize, go to school, or work with members of other races. Though less openly hostile than some forms, this still strikes me as racism.
I don’t think the solution is simple, but I’ll agree that time and exposure are needed. More important, I think, is education. Not just memorizing the idea that racism is wrong, so even if we are tempted to hate other races, we shouldn’t give in to the temptation, or at least we shouldn’t act on it. That seems to be the extent of much anti-racism “education.” Education needs to go beyond teaching people not to act on their fears and hatreds; it needs to teach people not to have that fear and hatred in the first place. That isn’t going to be easy. When a kid learns in school that racism is wrong, and that people ought to live together peacefully and all that, and then goes home to a parent who encourages him or her to play only with other kids with the same skin color, what is the kid learning?
The solution, I think, is simply for the species to become civilized. Long way to go.
Education will destroy racism, reparations are wrong though, its kind of a Pandoras box, because if they get reparations, then I want reparations for my decendents (Irish) being slaves to the English for nearly 700 hundred years. You see what I’m getting at? Everbody will want a piece of the cake, so no reparations are not right.
How much land on this planet is controlled by people of European descent?
Are non-whites supposed to pay palefaces forever to live on the planet as a result of technology enabling them to steal the land.
The machine gun was invented by Hyram Maxim but Cecil Rhodes used it to grab Rhodesia. When the Germans invaded Russia, Hitler said the Ukrainian people should be treated like the redskins. What redskins do you think he was referring to?
The Economic Wargame is a continuation of the Military Wargame by other means.
Solution’s simply, in meh humble opinion. I used to be prejudiced against fillipinos, on account of a bad english fillipina teacher I had that was mean to me as a kid, also because I’ve seen a number of fillipinas working as maids/servants (often illegal).
It all changed after I got meself a fillipina girl friend back in high school. Made hawt, hawt sweet love with her, and just had a good time hanging with her. Ain’t got no prejudices against fillipinos no more.
Social homoginization (work with me on that one, it has more than three syllables).
My smartass answer was genocide, but even that wouldn’t work because racism is just a form of xenophobia–we distrust, even hate, that which we don’t understand or which challenges the validity of our view of the world. If we wanted, we could easily annihilate any non white-skinned human on the planet, but then we’d run into ethnic differences between 'Merkins, Russians, Albanians (with their creepy pink eyes), Serbs, Jews… You’d run into the same issues if you left only Mongoloid Asians, Africans and Native Americans
Education is lofty, but it’s not a silver bullet. Otherwise educated people would not be racist.
My belligerent opinion? You want to end racism? Get people to stop identifying with themselves as a race apart from anyone else. Of course, it would be a pretty dull world then, but it should be peaceful enough.
Ending racism is a noble goal, but futile in the end. Humans like to hate other humans that are different. Look at all the killing in Africa now. they are all the same color, so they kill each other based on geography, ethnic background, religion, dialogue…etc. Look at all the killings in the Arab world, one sect killing another, or in Kosovo…it never ends and Race is seldom the cause.
Ending hatred would be a better goal…but how could you do that? bleh…no idea!
So if reparations do not work, then why do Jews get them when asked (Exodus, holocaust)? Why should the fact that African American slaves, who have their original identities systematically torn away from them, be denied reparations for that very reason?
I don’t know of anyone who got reparations for the Exodus. As for the Holocaust, money went to people who actually suffered in the Holocaust as slave laborers, not their great-grandkids.
Actually Capitalism and freedom are bad if ending racism is your goal (short of an interspecies war with martians or whatever). What you really want is centralized power that can impose the sweeping changes necessary to effect true integration.
Case in point, Yugoslavia – few in the world hated each other as much as these guys but you didn’t hear crap when Tito was in charge. If only America had a Tito we could appoint as dictator for life…
That’s a good point. A lot of people fail to realize that many things we want are simply not possible unless you are willing to give up your liberties. That elusive “equality” thing is probably the best example. The only way to make everyone equal is to MAKE everyone equal. I don’t think a lot of wannabe utopians have fully thought this through.
I’m with Dob. We will never end racisim, religious hatred, sexism, etc. If all people looked exactly alike, we would still find a reason to hate and kill one another, because, to quote Jimmy Cagney, “dat’s just de kinda hairpin we are.”
I’m surprised that no one has yet mentioned the standard solution to ethnic strife: ethnic separatism and the establishment of the independent nation state. If people can’t get along, they should separate, divide up the community property, and move on. Or so separatists believe.
This usually works better in theory than in practice. While the breakup of Czechoslovakia into Czech and Slovak states has been peaceful and more or less successful, the breakup of Yugoslavia has been disasterous. When Ireland broke away from Britain, the transition left some lingering problems that still vex both countries to this day.
If Quebec breaks away from Anglo Canada, as many have predicted, I expect the process will be peaceful and orderly, given the Canadian distaste for disorder and violence. On the other hand, the corresponding process in the US, with black Americans withdrawing to the South and declaring independence, would be so destructive that no one outside of a handful of radicals contemplates it seriously.
The creation of the state of Israel is an interesting special case. It did “solve” the problem of centuries of abuse and persecution of European Jews, but it did so by implicitly accepting the idea that Jews had no place in Europe. There was never a question of Germany or Poland giving up some of their territory to create a Jewish homeland.
Then you have the whole question of immigration. What obligations do the host countries have towards immigrants who are different from the native population? What obligations do the immigrants themselves have? Non-Europeans who immigrate to Europe certainly enounter racism, but they made the choice to come, presumably because the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
If it has taken the Europeans centuries of bloodshed and discord to arrive at a more or less peaceful, prosperous social and economic structures, why should immigrants expect to join these structures without struggle? Should immigrants instead stay home and work on making their native countries as peaceful and prosperous as those in Western Europe? Is the price one has to pay to live in a better place continual discrimination and hostility from one’s neighbors?
End racism? Yes, highly unlikely. However, it is surely possible to reduce racism, no? Although it’s hard to quantify, I think we can safely say that there is less racism in the US today than there was 50 years ago.