My best lesson on racism

Yep, sometimes I do feel exhausted. But not always, and since I grew up under communism, I'm kind of allergic to most things that resemble censorship. And any attempts to push me towards silence due to what sex I was born as feel like bordering on censorship.

Calling egalitarian comments inflamatory is a shaming tactic that doesn't work on me.

 

To be clear, it wasn't a shaming tactic. I was calling your sprawling, pseudo-intellectual treatises exhausting. If this is the method by which you need to demonstrate your worth and value as a person, then by all means keep churning out the copy.

 

Ok, so a bunch of these factors are out of people's individual control and point to systemic problems. The solution to a systemic problem is systemic change.

People are predictably shaped by their environments, with a little bit of mobility in the middle but stickiness at the ends of the rich to poor socioeconomic spectrum.

So if this is the case, why not advocate for change.

For historical problems you have things like affirmative action and reparations which can be done in a variety of ways to alleviate some of the damage done to those communities. Things like superannuation that we have in Australia is a good example and setting up a fund like that would go a long way.

For economic factors there is major advances that can be made, which will require a bottom up approach whether that's significant changes to our tax codes to a more progressive tax system and the redistribute the proceeds into those communities through investments, infrastructure, training, education systems and stuff.

This quote is at complete odds with everything else you've stated?

If i was to steal all of your clothes, cut off your internet, your phonelines and you where forced to go to a store naked to get clothes..... only to be fined by the police for being indecent.... is it your fault? or my fault?

 

I am just an old man who has lived a full life. But as far as I know, no one cared about my race, political affiliation, or sexual preference on this site. We are what we are. I have experienced nothing but acceptance here. I do not believe that any of us are racists. We have other things to think about.

 

well the problem is that underpinning what can be a rather tame or simple throw away statement can belie underlying biases that a person has.

In Australia a saying i heard a million times growing up is "When you go to the city, you can play spot the Aussie!" because they would see a lot of ethnic people within Australian cities.

Which is implying that people who are not white, are not Australian. That can lead to some really nasty shit pretty quickly if it carries out to it's conclusion. The truth is that Australia is one of the most multi-cultural diverse nation's on the planet and you won't get a single person take a second look at a kebab shop because they're delicious....... but the people who make them..... that's another story

 

Trying to argue about racism’s different factors, reasons, or even its existence is no different than the two different black/white white/black sided aliens Lucy was referring to. Each side had a deep understanding that they were right and didn’t understand how everyone couldn’t see it.

One person sees a never ending tide of poor choices, while another side see choices forced upon them through unfair predetermined circumstances. The sad part is that I could explain and justify my side, how the very laws were placed to subjugate a minority, how the people who made those laws also made laws that make it impossible to change them. I could say how generations of systematic degradation, humiliation, and actual physical violence isn’t as easy as “don’t be a criminal and vote”. I could go on and on about the business of prisoners that spans from post civil war chain gangs to modern day private prisons.

The reality is change is long overdue in our country, and do you know what will happen if we don’t do something....nothing. Nothing would happen.

 

This is quite pessimistic point of view, I'd say. Are you really trying to say we should stop trying to find what the actual truth is, because those attempts are hopeless?

You see, reality doesn't care about our understanding of it, or about how we try to get closer to the truth from different directions. It simply is. However, if we do want to get closer to the truth, what better choice we have but to talk to each other and try to understant and verify and so on?

If we're talking about the US, it is one of the least racist countries in the world, and the situation there is far better than it was a hundered, or fifty, or two dozen years ago. Sure, some shadows of the past reach even to these days, and yes, US justice system is often deserving being called injustice system. However...
The racism in US today is so weak that blaming history for the majority of today's problems is both flawed and pointless. Some other groups, despite having faced even harsher obstacles, are doing quite well today, so the black community could benefit from abandoning the victim mentality. It wouldn't solve *all* the problems, but it would sure make their situation *better*. Of course, the media and the politicians and other causes of ongoing problems would have to be dealt with too, but every improvement helps.

For crying out loud, statistics *prove* that whites are more likely to get unjustifiably shot/killed by US police. The recent protests have killed *more* innocent black people in two months than *all* of US police does in a *year*, so where's the outrage? How are dead black children, killed by black "protesters", helping the black community? And where's the clear condemnation of those responsible?

And why are so many people so deaf to the idea that much of what we're talking about isn't about race? Culture and class have *far* greater impact than skill color.

Yes, change is long overdue. But what changes you want done without causing a new wave of injustice or harm? I'm asking because most of the proposals one hears about are delusional, or impossible, or racist, or for worse, or a mix of several bad outcomes at once.

 

And you prove my point. The fact that you are arguing about racism in America to someone in America that is actually familiar with racism in America is beyond banging your head against the wall. In your rather upbeat version of reality, you did hit on one note that rings true , which is actually the source as well as the solution...culture.

Who do you think started, kept, and keeps the laws and created the systems that impoverish and hold down a specific race? Until that culture is changed, forced to acknowledge its shortcomings and unfairness, the culture will be stagnant.

Again, it’s fairly obvious that some people are oblivious...so conversion is unlikely.

 

And I'd say you're just repeating your own pre-existing thought patterns, without proposing solutions or even acknowledging reality.

US has had a black president, has millions of well-off African Americans, existing laws are race-blind or actually *favor* minorities, police the media call racist is more dangerous to whites, even the blacks say in polls that the most racist race in US is blacks...

Please, show me specific examples of where the *system* is racist against African Americans. Where the *state* is racist. A racist law, a racist policy, an established rule, not single racist individuals.

 

You’re right! Everything is fine here! Not sure why people are protesting all over the country?! You’re logic, from someone who isn’t from here, and not treated differently is spot on. I think the senseless murders, humiliating treatment, and sense of futility should continue...“I don’t think the really hard stuff will come for quite awhile, I say keep playing”.

And with that I’m done conversing with you. Feel free to respond in any fashion, I’m done. You are absolutely right about everything, nothing skewed, If only there was some sort of proof. Some sort of visual documentation that could show the absolute terror that some of us live with. Some sort of smoking bullet that suggests some are treated subhuman by others. If only something was actually recorded so the injustice may end...oh wait.

 

Who said that everything is fine? I say that the main roots of those problems are culture- and class-based (and that the *system* isn't racist against black Americans anymore), not that those problems don't exist.

But please, check the facts, even if only for yourself. Most black American are murdered by, you gussed it, other black Americans. Police are more likely to unjustly kill you if you're white than if you're black. The protests have killed more innocent blacks than US police does in a year. So how the F is this "protesting" helping? Sure, the situation was far from perfect. But the black community is now *worse off* than before, and it wasn't the police who killed all the other blacks and destroyed those black communities.

This kind of "protesting" is like treating a broken leg by setting it on fire.

Your call.

But if there's so much proof out there, what's preventing you from linking one single piece of it here?

 

Screw this, you know what? I'll add one more piece of advice, Nicoftime.

You might think twice about insinuating some others have no idea what racism and discrimination is about when some of those others might have grown up under actual socialism in a country where some of their family might have ended up in actual nazi concentration camps.

 

Nicoftime is correct about everything lmao.

"How could something be racist unless it specifically says "this law only applies to black people"???? Checkmate!" What a horrendously bad argument that's literally not accepted by any person with a background in sociology. Does it ever cross your mind that if literally every study and every academic contradicts your world view, that maybe... just maybe it's you that might be wrong here?

Check your shoes, there's shit on them.

 

Citation, please? Because I've literally heard scholars with background in sociology who *agree* with my point of view.

Maybe you've only listened to people inside your own bubble?

Edit: plus it's another strawman there, pretending to disprove something I didnt write...

 

Are you seriously contesting that there is systemic racial equality within America? This has been studied, peer reviewed, published and proven dozens of times over.

Is it even worth me linking you source material to read? Something tells me you wouldn't read it anyway.

But if i do, what do you want to wager on it? What are you willing to risk to show how confident you are? Would you donate $100 to charity if i where to go to the effort to prove that racism and it's effects is alive and well in America?

 

I think some of you need to step back and reread what sandman9355 is actually saying. Ya’ll seem to building a straw man.

 

An argument is built on a series of premises.

We've already seen from what he's said that he's built an argument on a house of cards. Constructing a strawman is not challenging a premise that he's stated.

 

Since when do you care about systematic oppression?

I mean, you've stated time and time again on this site that you would literally advocate for taking rights away from men. Don't see why you would think black men being oppressed is something that concerns you when you want to do the exact same thing to men (including black men) in your own way .

 

Well, it's an obvious response to cops killing black men since everyone around the world has been at least talking about racism since those killings happened.

And maybe you haven't mentioned men on this post, but on numerous of your other posts you have been talking about how you're just itching to have the future all-female government oppress men. Why are you for one type of dehumanization of human beings but think the other one (racism) is wrong? A lot of inconsistency with your worldview here.

 

So you're admitting that nothing involving any of your thought experiments are actual real things that you actually want to see implemented?

 

There is a big difference between women being in charge and oppressing men. I for one wouldn’t mind a change of thinking, see what happens when women are ruling over decisions, making law, and deciding on action.