Stop Racism!

[rpgfanatic]

Even though much of the world is against racism and there are laws that prevent people from discriminating on people for their race in many countries, much of the world is still racist. I know a person is a person no matter what color their skin is, where they are from, how old or how young they are, and therefore they should be treated the same and should equal respect and (those who aren't minors) rights, yet there are those who don't agree. What do you think is the cause of racism and how do you think we could stop this unfortunate part of our society from escalating more?

 

[j4kl1ng3r]

Racism is caused because the human mind is made up of a series of generalizations.

For instance, you can only see so many frames per second, any more than that, and your mind blends the frames together to make it look different than what happened in reality. Your mind is saying: well, since I can't tell what happened between point a and point c, I'm going to rename c to b and call it good.

I mean, seriously, have you ever once had a conversation WITHOUT generalizing? Lawyers are greedy, politicians don't do anything, so on and so on. I mean, it's part of our psyche. And to be brutally honest, racism mostly comes about due to stereotypes that happen to ring true for one reason or another, when dealing with the specific time frames and societies that the stereotypes exist in.

For instance, some would say that black people are poor/dirty/stupid/criminals. It's easy to see where this stere0type came about, because for the past 100 years African Americans have been on the bottom rung of American society. Thus, of course they're going to be poor, perceivably (which is not, but should be, a word) unintelligent, dirty, and more likely to commit criminal acts.

In reality, racism is not real, because race is not real. You are, in terms of species, 100% genetically identical to anyone from any race on the planet. Even domesticated dogs have more genetic difference than a black man and a white man, or any combination of men. Race is an invention of society. Really, the difference between me, and someone from Uganda, is simply the fact that the man from Uganda is from Uganda, and his family and bloodlines have entirely different traits than mine because the same group of people kept intermarrying until the differences between them and other people got to the point where it was assumed that this man from Uganda was a different KIND of man. This is not true, he's just from a different family. And their traits have been passed back and forth in a genetic mixing pool for a couple 1,000 years, giving him mild differences in skin tone and weight and size.

It'd be the same if you seperated groups of fish and watched them for 100 years. You would not eventually develop two different species, or two distinct KINDS of fish, you'd just have some fish that developed differently because of shared genetic traits from their family members.

Racism will continue on as long as humans are alive. Our societies and our people have too short of a memory to get passed any real problems. Think about it. You've taken history, right? Compulsory history classes. Did they ever once mention Mozart? You heard about Isaac Newton in Science, you learned about Mozart in Music class, but you didn't learn it from HISTORY class (at least, you probably didn't in America). The point I'm trying to get across really is, the fact of the matter is, that information gets lost in translation through periods of time, and we find ourselves mulling over the same problems now that we did in the medieval times, we just don't know it because we don't remember because we're stupid and nobody remembers what happened back then except for people who WANT to remember.

As long as learning lessons from history is optional (unless we're talking about Christopher Columbus), no problems will ever get solved with any finality.

 

[kaidus]

I know that from birth we all have the same potential to be good people, but I'm still a little racist. It's not because I think I'm inherently superior as a white person, it is just because of the law of averages. It may just be my town, but I've met literally about 2 black people who were not the typical "beat people up and steal shit" wannabe "gangsta". I try not to judge people based on colour, but when day after day you see members of an ethnic group falling into a negative stereotype, it becomes pretty tough. I'd never act or do anything differently, but in my head I make the separation purely out of conditioning.

 

[Ellie]

I agree completely with Kaidus on this.

While yes there shouldn't be stereotypes, honestly, I can name one black person from my school who wasn't a thug and didn't go around bullying or shanking people. Not "seems like they would" but "actually did".

However, the same could almost certainly be said about white people. Maybe not the same stereotype but, "I haven't seen a single white person who doesn't spend their time playing video games" for example. For some reason we just don't notice, or don't care about, stereotypes about our own "race".

I find it utterly disgusting however to persecute or discriminate based on race because, if you read my first paragraph, "I can name one". For the sake of that one kid I would never say "ok so we should lynch all black people".

 

[kaidus]

The hell is a kuidon? (pff ninjaedit)

I find it utterly disgusting however to persecute or discriminate based on race because, if you read my first paragraph, "I can name one". For the sake of that one kid I would never say "ok so we should lynch all black people".

Also +1 to that.

 

[Lune de la Cruor]

Racism being part of discrimination is based on ignorance and fear in my opinion. Feeling insecure about yourself and your situation creates hatred towards a specific group of people.
It's also funny that racist people often never experienced racism themselves, at least that's what I've discovered. I once had a class about how education affects values and directions in life and so I would say additionally that to a certain degree education plays a role. The higher the education the less there is a tendency towards racism.

Also it's being said that there shouldn't be stereotypes. But I think stereotypes don't have to be a bad thing. It's actually just a process of our mind to keep things a bit organized, you group things according to a specific attribute. Of course if this is based on negative attributes people oppose it but what if we say, all black people are very smart, all asian people have great hair and all white people are very friendly. Is this still considered racism?
After all it's prejudices which aren't fully applicable to every person...

 

[Love]

I do not judge people on color, religion or nationality or any of those. I judge by personalities, by who the person really is. I find that it's really unfair to horribly treat a black man just because he is black. I believe everyone just has to prove himself/herself. Just because I come from a certain race doesn't mean I am a bad person, nor a good person either.

I agree that it might be a little hard to avoid doing that with a negative stereotype, but if we try and give people chances. I think that if we put ourselves in those people's situations and feel how they'd feel if we torment them just because where they come from, we'd understand and stop acting so mercilessly.

Recently, I've been put in a situation that covers this myself. I met someone who comes from a country that is not favorable to mine at all, meaning that no one likes it and they hate its people. Although I admit I felt the same sometimes, I decided to give that person a chance to prove himself.

Seriously, we are all humans and we all live on Earth. We all have our faults.

 

[Xaixis]

Racism is a form of incompetence and ignorance.

Such is why your find racism more in areas where education is low, such as small "hockey-pokey" towns in the south. When people are unfamiliar with something, they immediately find differences between said person and themselves.

Thus, education and understanding each others cultures, histories, and traditions would be a great contributor towards lowering racism towards each other.

 

[NexS]

Firstly, i'd like to say that i like to hate things, even though i don't like it. (it doesn't make sense, but oh well :P)
If everything suddenly started being perfect and i'd have nothing to whine about, i tell you, i wouldn't know what to do with myself! that scares me a little!
I've had a little bit of racism my way, but nothing too serious as some of the specifically picked racial groups, so i wouldn't know exactly how they feel. But what i mean is, what would happen if world peace happened?
starting with racism, and discrimination. There are social workers and professionals who trained for years to do their jobs and they love it. If racism/prejudice stopped then there is a great many people who are put out of a job, and very possibly into misery.

For each person suffering, there is a person working to help them

 

[Gulch666]

racism is just a big ignorant endless cycle. racist people are usually ignorant and ignorant people are the ones who typically fall into stereotypes.

im not racist in the least, i just dont like a lot of people, but not because of what they look like or where theyre from. but because of what they do or how they act

and...awesome http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRfjLfyXYlA&NR=1

 

[Venetia]

Racism is the backbone of Life in America! Hooray, racism.

Without it, we wouldn't have Boost Mobile Phones!

Without it, who would get nervous walking around on Martin Luther King Jr Blvd.?

Without it, who would employ people who make 40oz'ers, and where would we buy them?

Without it, we wouldn't have those creepy catholic Jesus candles in the supermarkets next to the Latin Foods section!

Without it, who would produce all the world's television shows or own any of the world's banks?

Without it, Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald's would lose nearly all of their marketing strategies!

Without it, what would people in Alabama, Arkansas, Virginia, Louisiana, or Georgia do all day?

Without it, the Metal Detectors industry would be bankrupt as inner-city schools would no longer need them!

Without it, who would the Air Traffic Marshals target in their shake-downs?

Without it, who would run the dry cleaning businesses? Hispanic people?! They suck at dry cleaning!

Without it, where would we turn to for incredibly cheap labor??

Without it, there'd be people of every race in rap music videos, and have you ever seen how many people are in those things? People'd go blind from seeing too many colors at once!

Etcetera!

I think you see where I'm going with this!

Up with racism! :D

 

[rpgfanatic]

Lol... well made me laugh :haha:

 

[Alexander Morou]

I find it ironic that equal opportunity employers ask what race you are on their applications.

If they don't discriminate, why do they ask?

 

[rpgfanatic]

I find it ironic that equal opportunity employers ask what race you are on their applications.

If they don't discriminate, why do they ask?

Because most larger businesses are required by law to have a certain amount of "minority" workers to give a chance to get a job also.

 

[Alexander Morou]

I realize that, but that fact alone would result in cases where they discriminate against those that don't fit into those minority groups. Picking someone for meeting a ratio of races against qualification is counter intuitive.

 

[Venetia]

yeah that's the biggest argument against affirmative action.

but the u.s. in particular hasn't precisely had the prettiest track record in how we treat women or non-caucasians, so the stance against it is probably going to mostly be a matter of debate rather than action for many years to come.

 

[Ellie]

There shouldn't be a race checkbox on job applications. It should be X is most qualified for this job, they get the position. Discriminating based on how good someone will be over someone else is 100% fine, otherwise you wouldn't get the best people doing the jobs that suit them. But working your statistics so that there's always a white, a black, an asian and a frog is completely and utterly getting the point wrong. The point is that race shouldn't even have a presence - that every race should have an equal chance not that every race should have an equal amount of workers.

 

[Lune de la Cruor]

But maybe you have to watch the percentage of races you have in your company.
Example could be you have 75% latinos and 20% whites and 5% blacks. So you might want to get some asian people and more blacks and whites, to keep it "equal". I don't know. There is this over-sensitivity thing going on, where they always want to act totally correct and treat everybody fair...
We don't have a race checkbox over here on any form...so I don't know really.

 

[Ellie]

But wanting there to be an equal number of each race is in itself both discriminatory and racism.

If you really care about racial equality then it shouldn't matter how many of each race are working for your company.

 

[Venetia]

That's a pretty idea, but here's the pro-affirmative action argument:

Let's say we abolish tracking race in job statistics. Cool.
But then Widgets, Inc., the biggest national supplier of widgets and widget accessories, has a bigoted hiring staff. Almost every Widgets, Inc. employee is white.

Let's say John Blackington, a blackguy, decides to apply for Widgets, Inc. He's more qualified than his opponents, but oh, that hiring staff. He is turned down.
Pissed, he files a lawsuit.
But here's a problem: there's no statistical evidence present to say whether or not there are any minorities in the company. And Widgets, Inc. is a giant company; it's not feasible to go in and interview every employee on their race.

The government can't occasionally poll every business in the country to make sure they're not being bigoted. Affirmative action is present, in a small way, to ensure that people aren't being discriminated against based on their age, color, creed, sex, or medical status.