My best lesson on racism

I also remeber seeing that episode when I was very young. I think star trek has alway been a great teacher of ethics.
Maybe thats what went wrong with discovery.
Universal equality was hard wired into the show from the outset. Instead they tried to foist some woke, steaming pile of crap on us. All of a sudden all the women are strong women, and all the men are duplicitous bastards.

 

As I said to a friend of mine today, racism is like Lead or Dioxin. Regardless of of you want it or not, chances are that you've been exposed and its left a permanent mark. The choice / action required is to make the unconscious, conscious, by actively thinking about your perceptions instead of taking them for granted / at face value.

As for Star Trek - the mission statement was there at the beginning. "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations". Claiming that Discovery isn't in line with that is well... illogical.

 

@L-u-c-y schools us all on racism with a Star Trek Reference.
I absolutely LOVED this episode.
...And I love you for bringing it up L-u-c-y.

 

@L-u-c-y if you like sci-fi, the bobiverse audiobooks are amazing. I really can't recommend them enough. The best sci-fi I've herd in years.

https://www.audible.co.uk/series/Bo...0DFT1Bk13106022002IH&&ipRedirectOverride=true

 

Racism is bad not because it is racism, it is because it is a form of hate and hate it is like violence, never goes down, instead it scalates quickly

It is sad seeing that we are really advanced in some things like technology but so primitive in others without any real intention to change it as a society

 

I wouldn't say racism is a form of hate, given even one day-old babies are racists. Prejudice yes, but not necessarily hate. I can easily assume that blue reptilians are all morons without having to hate them.

Technology is external, it can evolve without humans having to evolve at a similar pace. Racism is internal and some of it is built-in at a genetic level, much harder to overcome that.

And there's the fact that racism is often kind of *useful*. It is a defense (and preliminary sorting) mechanism that worked quite well during most of human history, because humans from other tribes were often more dangerous than (or predictably culturally different from) those from one's own tribe. And they still are, in much of today's world.

Even today, different racial groups often hold conflicting cultural/moral/religious/whatever values to a degree that makes guesstimates based on one's race and look reliable enough to constitute a net positive. Sure, you might know that *some* blue reptilians are smart, but if four out of five are sorta moronic, not counting on a random blue reptilian being a smart one makes sense. Some forms of racism can even give one an advantage, and not necessarily an immoral one to boot, so I won't be holding my breath waiting for humanity to change our ways.

 

Tall, short, ugly, handsome, black, white... what does it matter? what difference does it make? In a hundred years we will all be bald and we will be underground

 

Sci Fi is such a great way to examine human societies and cultures and force us to look at them differently, and pretty much every series does it. Even the Orville, which started out making fun of these shows, now looks at a different facet each episode, exposing all kinds of prejudices.

 

The Orville was always a love letter to star trek.

 

I'd even say the Orville is a better Trek than the latest Trek was.
Orville does what Star Trek used to, it helps us hope for a better future that will keep on improving.
But commenting on Picard is a waste of electrons.

 

Discovery was such a DOA steaming pile of crap. It's only redeeming feature is the catharsis I get from shitting all over it.

 

Lucky you, for I don't feel that catharsis. I'm just sad. Modern authors have rejected the ideas Star Trek was built on while failing to create good stories, they've both turned to darkness and made that darkness unappealing to watch. And given we're supposed to talk about racism here, I'll add that I feel modern Trek actually contains way more racism than the older series did.

No, I don't hate modern Trek. But a quote springs to mind that I guess applies to many now and that could spell doom for the whole franchise:

"What is deadlier than hate, and flows without limit? Indifference."

 

Lucy, Thank you for introducing this non-chastity topic.

I teach English as a Second Language and come into contact with many people of different ethnicities and nationalities. I find it impossible to predict who a person is inside from looking at them. Smart - dense, open minded - closed minded, curious - dull.

Continuous surprises. I love it.

 

A well timed and very pertinent post. Thanks Miss LUCY!

 

You would have to wonder if an alien species would view us all the same way. No matter what color your skin is, they all look the same. In the same way that we look at house cats, they are all different colors but we don’t recognize it. They all just look like cats to us. An amazing quote to remember. “You can’t expect sense from two people with such extreme viewpoints” something we can all recognize in our everyday lives.

 

I don't know about that one chief.

It's literally an irrational thought process making judgements about a person before you know them.

 

I'm afraid you're both right and wrong, in a sense. You're right, in the sense that one makes preliminary judgements about persons without really knowing them, and those judgements are often wrong.

But, and I'm perfectly aware I'll be poking a hornets' nest here, the reason people have *evolved* to be racist and *continue* to be racist is some forms of racism provide an evolutionary advantage. If one has to make decisions based on fragmentary data, and if race/look-influenced decision-making gives better results, racism helps. "Racism" that doesn't make one consider oneself superior, "racism" that simply makes one take factually existing racial differences into account, can provide a measurable benefit.

Case in point? In many places in US, a random black person is more than ten times more likely to try to kill a police officer, even a black police officer, during a random traffic stop than a random Eastern-Asian person is. The fact that this stems from the cultures currently prevalent in those racial groups, not from anything built-in on a genetic level, doesn't matter. If you're trying to deal with why it's so hard to get rid of racism among the US police, your solution has to factor in the sad fact that a limited form of racism actually helps them stay alive. Disclaimer - I'm not a police officer, don't have any in my social circles, don't live in US. But me being safe from US police doesn't change facts.

Or you want something less edgy? In Western Europe, darker-skinned people show way higher prevalence of vitamin D deficiency, so makes way more sense for their doctor to check that. For example, preliminary research indicates vitamin D deficiency can double one's chance of dying from COVID-19. Medicine in general includes *many* examples of differences between races, and a doctor ignoring those differences could make a tragic mistake. I'm not blaming you here, you didn't write anything of the sorts, but the very word racism is so misused today that this whole stupidity often *hurts* people of color (and whites too).

One might argue that what I'm talking about isn't true racism, i.e. it isn't about one race being "superior". Cops being more cautious around people more likely to kill them, or doctors recommending screenings tailored to a patient's race, doesn't mean they have to consider their own race "better". But in this day and age, many people consider common sense to be rasism :-(

 

Do you think i should cross the street if i hear a white person speaking in an American accent?

The level of violent crimes in your country is much higher due to your countries predisposition to being obsessed with guns. Should i assume malice whenever i interact with any American?

If not, why not?

 

Ummmm... Maybe you didn't notice I mentioned I don't live in the US.

The country I do live in is actually one of the safest in the world AND has shall issue concealed carry. I can legally walk into a school with a glock on my belt and a loaded shotgun in a case over my shoulder and we haven't had a single school shooting during my lifetime. Guns carried by law abiding folk aren't the problem.

Then there's the fact that in the US, more than half the murders are commited by African Americans, so you worrying about white Americans is your prejudice talking

Lastly, I don't see you refuting any of the points I've made.

 

Honestly @sandman9355 you're kinda male-doming this thread. It was a really nice, lighter way of @L-u-c-y to address the turmoil going on in the world right now and you're kinda making it about you and how smart you are. Could you stop now?

 

Care to expand on WHY that's the case? Any ideas?

Give it time. A cake in a microwave doesn't taste as good as one cooked in an oven.

 

Honestly, this is an off-topic forum, and I don't see what my sex has to do with the crux of the matter. Whether an idea is wrong or not doesn't depend on what sex is the person voicing it.

And while you might not agree with my point of view, I don't believe all men should be submissive towards all women. There's nothing wrong about a man making his point, and calling it male-doming doesn't change that. I'm not attacking any other user here, I'm just presenting ideas. Oh, and do I really have to mention switches and female subs and trans people and so on exist too, even on this site?

Call me old fashioned, but I've been taught that neither people nor their ideas should be judged based on what sex/gender they were born as.

 

Since you're asking...
Mostly history, cultural and economic factors. It's a complex topic and I've never seen a single cause mentioned that would explain the majority of it. It has nothing to do with race. It is millions of people who grow up in damaged families, with poor education, in environments where violence is acceptable or even glorified, who lack hope or job opportunities... It is politicians who convince people to vote for them even though what those politicians do *harms* the people who vote for them, and the people so stuck on bad ideas they don't even see how they're hurting themselves. It is self-serving talking heads who keep telling people they're victims and not responsible for anything. And I could go on and on

Take that time. What I perceive as reality is so bleak I'd be happy to have some of my perceptions corrected.

 

Do you ever just feel exhausted typing this type of stuff? Just big old paragraphs looking to inflame...