Your military tale was in response to what accusation?
dis one.
You’re going to have to work on your definitions. I asked a question with no ulterior motives. The theme throughout several posts was that racism was being kept alive, somehow, by various bereaucracies keeping tabs on numbers of people. The direct claim of the OP, which you supported, was that if the bureaucracies (specifically colleges) stopped keeping track, the issue would resolve itself.
Since I have seen a lot of evidence that racism still continues in this country and that it continues to manifest itself in illegal ways, despite 35+ years of specific laws, I was geninely curious whether you (three) believed that that racism was actually kept alive because forms had places in which to indicate ethnic background.
I’m sorry that you consider that an accusation. I can’t even figure out what you think I was accusing you of, unless it was naiveté. I was just curious as to why you expressed what you did.
Tomndebb- Why do you refer to Erasticitys military experience as a “tale” ? Do you not believe that blacks can be racist?
Off topic.
By the way, Tom, I’ve noticed that you tend to post most frequently on topics which have a racial component. I’ve always wondered why this is. And by the way, I’ve always found your posts to be thoughtfull, even when I havent agreed with them. I’d just like to thank you for not flaming and slandering people on this board.
Infidel, I am sure there are black racists. I am sure that many of them are in the military. I would not be surprised to find that some racist black non-coms (when in a majority position) engage in the same sort of activities in which white non-coms engaged when the the Army was only recently integrated and the troops were overwhelmingly white.
However, the anecdote provided (with no substantiation) was that if two guys messed up and the reviewers were all “brown,” a “brown” screw-up had a 90% chance to be passed while a “white” screw-up had a 90% chance to be failed. Non-coms are judged on the effectiveness of their troops. While a certain amount of favoritism can be expected, 90% rates of permitting bad performance seems to be a number pulled from the air.
I actually used “tale” simply because it was shorter to type than “narrative,” but I may have unconsciously grabbed that word because I felt that the narrative in question was simply written to evoke a perspective without actually being based in fact.
As to my interest in the subject, my impression is that the corrosive nature of racist acts is the most damaging aspect of American life (well, that and lite beer). I have no more use for Al Sharpton than I do for David Duke. On this MB, however, I am more likely to find someone launching an absolute attack against the mixed good done by the flawed Jesse Jackson than I am to find someone lauching an absolute attack against mixed bad done by the flawed Ronald Reagan, so my postings tend to have a one-sided feel to them.
Let’s say we abolished formal racial categories in America today. We would still have informal ones. Perhaps eventually the barriers between groups will disolve - with intermarriage, and with the immigration of groups that defy traditional racial categories. But we would still have racism of a sort, and a racial hierachy. This is basically what has happened in Brazil.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_098.html
In such a country, racism might actually be worse, because there are no formal categories, therefore it is difficult to resolve specific complaints - or redress racial discrimination. So the people at the bottom (mostly black or Indian) of the ladder are really stuck there.
As for what race I wan’t to belong to - since I am planning to go to Japan - I’ll say “gaijin”.
I wanna be Vulcan. Then, not only would I have a longer lifespan, pointy ears, and a super-genius mentality, but I could also sniff condescendingly at all of you humans and your overemotional, petty problems. 
Racism WILL NEVER be eliminated. There will always be someone who dislikes certain people based on superficial, physical characteristics. However, I do stand by my assertion that while institutions continue to perceive race as a relevant issue, SOME people will give weight to it that they normally would not. For example; Americans of African descent (collectively) underperform scholastically and wage-wise. The obvious explaination (and accurate IMHO) is that this is the legacy of slavery and/or institutional discrimination. I believe in a level playing field, not one slanted in favor of whoever claims to have the most oppressed ancestors. All affirmative action accomplishes is to make educated people think “Well, slavery ended several generations ago. If ‘they’ still NEED help, there must be another reason.” As an Acadian, I was very glad that a proposition several years ago to grant “minority status” to Acadians failed. Whatever I acomplish, I need not worry that people attribute my success to special opportunities given to “those stupid coon-asses”. In short, my people were spared the indignity of having the bar lowered. I have know too many blacks, who were too smart and hard working to have doubt cast on how they achieved their goals in life. Yet, thanks to AA, people wonder if they made it because of their mettle or their melanin.
Where AA has amounted to quotas or lowering admission standards, it has, indeed, been racist and done nothing to help the people for whom it was intended.
Quotas and lower standards, however, are simply the lazy way to address AA. AA, as originally envisioned worked on a totally different principle, but that has been addressed in many other threads. However, your OP talked about trying to reduce racism or its effects simply by getting everyone to pretend that they all look alike. That fails, too.
As noted earlier, the reason for “keeping tabs” is to be able to see whether any group is suffering legal insults. Removing all the recorded categories will not stop people from discriminating, it will simply allow lawmakers to say “We don’t have any categories, so we can stop funding efforts to redress grievances on an individual basis.”
People who are not or cannot be identified become invisible to society, so they can be abused on an individual level and the greater society can ignore it. Quantifying the groups that suffer insult forces lawmakers and law enforcers to recognize that a pattern of abuse exists rather than pretending that every incident is simply a one time thing.
Do I understand you to say that if institutions were to stop collecting data on race, people wouldn’t notice it? On what do you base this assumption?
It seems far more likely to me to be the other way around. The “power structures” make this distinction where it matters. If universities and other such institutions don’t ask if your background is Italian, Irish, etc., it’s because there is unlikely to be any significant statistical differences between people from those backgrounds.